The second feature by Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is a brilliantly wry film of funeral traditions and familial idiosyncrasies. Tackling dark familial secrets with acerbic wit, it explores a culture of silence around sexual abuse. The result is a fiercely feminist tale filled with powerful observations, told through the eyes of a woman struggling with her commitment to community, as she’s backed into corners by social norms.
While the movie’s humor and visual form verge on surreal, a deceptively withheld lead performance by Susan Chardy — who plays Shula, a woman visiting her Zambian hometown after many years abroad — helps ground it within social realism. Nyoni, who was similarly born in Zambia but raised in Britain, strikes this visual and tonal balance with an expert hand right from her opening scenes, which follow the surprising discovery of a dead body on an isolated road.
From there on out, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl sweeps through its mere 99 minutes with clamorous force. Implications eventually give way to revelations, but the story remains rooted in burning questions of how best to challenge a foundational status quo without breaking the bonds of family, recalling films like Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, but blazing a unique path.
What is On Becoming a Guinea Fowl about?
Credit: Chibesa Mulumba / A24.
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