Year: 2024

Runtime: 95 minutes

Written and directed by: Rungano Nyoni

Starring: Susan Chardy, Roy Chisha, Elizabeth Chisela, Henry B. J. Phiri, Doris Naulapwa, Esther Singini, Norah Mwansa

By Sarah Manvel

Sometimes the only possible way to handle dark topics is through comedy. Just as we cannot look directly at the sun lest we burn our eyes, we cannot talk about the sexual abuse of children lest we must face up to the way in which our families, schools and societies have failed generations of children, most usually young girls. “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is the first Zambian movie to play in the main body of the Cannes Film Festival. Its writer-director Rungano Nyoni gained international attention in 2017 with “I Am Not a Witch,” an equally feminist story (though unseen by me) about a young girl being mistreated by her family and her entire society. “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” has some problems with the inconsistency of its tone and the pacing, but these are minor quibbles with a powerfully emotional film.

Shula (Susan Chardy) is driving home from a fancy dress party when she sees a body lying in the road. It’s not just any body, but that of her Uncle Fred (Roy Chisha). She hadn’t seen him in years and didn’t like him very much, but it’s definitely her Uncle Fred. In Zambia help takes a long time coming, but she’s soon joined by her irritating cousin Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), who gets out a passing taxi and makes such a drunken fool of herself that Shula won’t let her into the car. As Shula has the nicest and largest house in the family – she works for a Western company – it gets taken over by the relatives for the wake. Shula checks herself into a hotel to escape but three aunties show up, lecture her about her family responsibilities, take all the toiletries and bring her back home. Shula’s father (Henry B. J. Phiri) is an irresponsible lush, and Shula’s mother (Doris Naulapwa) is having a great time bewailing her loss. The aunties argue about the cooking, complain about Shula’s hospitality and gossip about everybody. It’s very funny, in the ways that overbearing relatives and complicated families often are.

The contrast between Shula and Nsansa is total. Shula is a primly dressed, well-educated, reserved woman who seems more comfortable with the Western co-workers she collaborates with over zoom than many of her relatives. Nsansa wears long braids and short skirts, makes crass jokes, drinks a lot, and also remembers much more of their childhood than Shula does. There’s a third cousin named Bupe (Esther Singini), who is still in college living in a dorm that often floods, but she’s been having such a hard time recently that the family doesn’t want to tell her about the funeral, in case she breaks down again. Nsansa and Shula don’t agree, of course, and the ways in which the three cousins hang out and chat is a really gorgeous depiction of the pressure-cooker family-event situations in which most adult relatives spend their time together. All this is mixed with excerpts of cartoons about African animals that the girls watched as children, which included learning about the guinea fowl. And slowly the three cousins begin to discuss more of Uncle Fred’s secrets, and who they were secret from. 

But most urgently and least amusingly of all, the cousins realise their family is blaming Fred’s widow (Norah Mwansa), whose name we never learn, for his death. Obviously if she had been a better wife Fred wouldn’t have been out at night, which means that the family is entitled to compensation from the widow’s family. Shula also realises that the widow, whose oldest child is seven years old, is still a teenager. 

The metaphor of the title is how people can protect others from predators by telling the truth, loudly and honestly, about what they see. As Shula and Nsansa start to work at confronting the horrible truths in their own family, it becomes apparently why Ms Nyoni is, with only her second feature, such an important filmmaker. In telling a story about this specific family she’s also told an utterly universal one, which is absolutely relatable to anyone whose family has skeletons or buried secrets. She’s held up a light to a situation which should be unacceptable in her culture, and also our own. And she’s done it with humour, meaning that the movie’s righteous fury is leavened with enough good cheer that this is a resounding and powerful experience. The women sitting around me at the Cannes Film Festival leapt to their feet cheering when it was over, as Ms Nyoni and Ms Chardy were visibly moved by the strength of our reaction. If you care about what can happen to girls and to women, this movie is not to be missed.