On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
A middle-aged man’s sudden death brings about a reckoning with the past for an extended Zambian family in Rungano Nyoni’s scalding drama, which balances domestic realism and expressionistic absurdity with precision.
Q&A with Susan Chardy on Oct. 3 & 5
A middle-aged man’s sudden death brings about a reckoning with the past for an extended Zambian family in Rungano Nyoni’s scalding drama. Balancing domestic realism and expressionistic absurdity with precision and constant surprise, Nyoni, in the follow-up to her feature debut, I Am Not a Witch, commandingly delineates the contours of a community caught between tradition and modernity. Nyoni’s film centers on Shula (a furious and touching Susan Chardy), whose stoical response to finding her uncle’s body on the street in the middle of the night hints at the many emotional fissures that will lead to the exposure of difficult truths long repressed. The film’s compositional rigor, inventive sound design, and unexpected narrative turns and digressions confirm Nyoni as a distinctive new voice in international cinema. Winner of the Best Director prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. An A24 release.
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On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. Courtesy of A24.
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