On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

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