Skip to main content
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl film image; woman wearing sequin-studded helmet

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

This event has passed

When Shula (Susan Chardy) returns home to Zambia and finds her uncle’s dead body on the roadside by a brothel, the last thing she wants is to mourn him. Her boisterously drunk cousin Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela) can’t stop laughing, because Uncle Fred died as he lived: a pervert. But when their aunties shame them into helping with three intense days of traditional funeral rites, the cousins must wrestle with the sanctification of a man who caused great harm in his lifetime.

Kicking off our latest installment of African Cinema Now!, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is the second feature from writer-director Rungano Nyoni (I Am Not a Witch), who was awarded a Best Director prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. Darkly humorous and occasionally surrealist, her writing is matched by razor-sharp editing and immersive sound design to expose the absurdity of the family’s over-the-top demands. The pressure cooker of the funeral is contrasted with the joys and catharsis of stolen moments between the cousins. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is a defiant warning call to families who hide predators in their midst.

Akojo Film Collective says:

No place is gender-based discrimination more apparent than in the domestic space of the home. Nyoni’s sensibilities in depicting the lives of Zambian women make for a film that challenges and deconstructs these intimate spaces and the labour expected of women and girls within them. The surreal nature of life for the main character, Shula holds deeply a universal understanding of the realities of womanhood even as it binds her deeper to other younger women in her family.


A magically transcendent, cunningly funny, and arresting piece of cultural commentary that puts the inequalities of tradition against the warmth community can, still, on occasions, provide.

Robert Daniels, rogerebert.com

Taut, absorbing, and, at ninety-nine minutes, ruthlessly concise.

Justin Chang, New Yorker

A story of discoveries both minor and monumental, one that’s flecked with troubling visions and an escalating sense of urgency.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times

 

Community Partner

UBC Africa Awareness Initiative

Director

Rungano Nyoni

Cast

Susan Chardy, Elizabeth Chisela

Credits
Country of Origin

Zambia/UK/Ireland

Year

2024

Language

In Bemba and English with English subtitles

Awards

Best Director: Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2024

19+
95 min
A24, BBC Film, Element Pictures

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Executive Producer

Eva Yates, Christian Vesper, Olivia Sleiter

Producer

Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Tim Cole

Screenwriter

Rungano Nyoni

Cinematography

David Gallego

Editor

Nathan Nugent

Production Design

Malin Lindholm

Original Music

Lucrecia Dalt

Also Playing

Frankenstein

Dir. Guillermo del Toro
149 min

Frankenstein and Guillermo del Toro might have been made for each other. The movie does not disappoint, a ripping yarn of grand adventure, spectacle, hubris, passion and XXL body parts, a tale of the fantastic that rings the imagination. Screening in 35mm.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989

Dir. Göran Hugo Olsson
240 min

Drawing on 30 years of television archives, Göran Hugo Olsson relates the early history of the state of Israel, as reported by Swedish filmmakers, politicians and journalists. "An astonishing, invaluable document." William Mullally, The National

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Ballad of a Small Player

Dir. Edward Berger
105 min

Colin Farrell stars in this noir film about a gambler running out of luck in Macau, from the director of Conclave and All Quiet on the Western Front. Tilda Swinton, Fala Chen and Deannie Yip costar.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Woman in the Dunes

Dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara
147 min

Teshigahara's collaboration with novelist Kōbō Abe's is vividly strange, erotic and unsettling allegory about an amateur entymologist who is himself ensnared in a trap he only dimly understands. Screening in 35mm.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema