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.
Writer-director Rungano Nyoni (I Am Not a Witch) was awarded a Best Director prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard for her powerful sophomore feature. 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.
Best Director: Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2024
The off-kilter, absurdist vibe of the picture is enchanting, but it’s rooted in deep horror: The whole movie is about the ways that cruelty and injustice become codified.
Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
Media Partner
Community Partner
Susan Chardy, Elizabeth Chisela
Zambia/UK/Ireland
2024
In Bemba and English with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
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
Rungano Nyoni
Rungano Nyoni is a self-taught writer and director. She was born in Lusaka, Zambia, and grew up in Wales, UK. Rungano’s debut feature I Am Not a Witch (2017) follows an eight-year-old girl who is exiled to a witch camp. The film premiered at Cannes and was nominated for numerous international awards.
Filmography: I Am Not a Witch (2017)
Photo by Gabriel Gauchet
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al
The Arvind Ramdas Connections Quartet + The Connection
Arvind Ramdas and a stellar line up of musicians (Cory Weeds!) pay tribute to Freddie Redd's hard bop score to the seminal indie movie The Connection (1961) in this VanJazz co-presentation. Live music at 7:00 pm, film at approximately 8:15 pm.
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
Day of Wrath
Anna, the young second wife of a well-respected but much older pastor, falls in love with her stepson when he returns to their small seventeenth-century village. Stepping outside the bounds of the village's harsh moral code has disastrous results.
Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
Alex Gibney's doc relates the near-lethal attack on Salman Rushdie in 2022, the writer's painful rehab and recovery, and his reflections on life before, during and after the publication of The Satanic Verses.
House of Hope
"House of Hope" is the name of a Waldorf elementary school near Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, founded by Manar and her husband Milad. This documentary follows their efforts to go about their lives before, during, and after the events of October 7.