On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Rungano Nyoni's On Becoming a Guinea Fowl premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where Nyoni won the Best Director prize (shared). It is the Welsh-Zambian filmmaker's second feature, arriving seven years after her acclaimed debut I Am Not a Witch, and like that earlier film it threads a deadpan, semi-magical vein of comedy through a serious examination of how contemporary Zambian women carry inherited burdens. A24 distributes the film internationally, with co-production from BBC Film, the BFI and Element Pictures.

Susan Chardy plays Shula, a young middle-class woman who, late at night and dressed for a fancy-dress party, finds her uncle's body on a deserted highway. Elizabeth Chisela is her cousin Nsansa, Henry B.J. Phiri her father, and Roy Chisha the uncle himself, glimpsed in flashback. Cinematographer David Gallego (Embrace of the Serpent) shoots the suburban interiors and dusty streets of Lusaka in cool, slightly dreamlike compositions; the title's recurring motif of the guinea fowl, drawn from a 1970s Zambian children's television show, returns at intervals as a sly emblem.

Critics greeted the film as a confirmation of one of the most distinctive directorial voices working today, with a 100 per cent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 87 indicating universal acclaim. Sight & Sound, The Guardian and Cahiers du Cinéma placed it on year-end best-of lists. Beyond Cannes, it took the Golden Eye at the Zurich Film Festival, Best Breakthrough Performance for Chardy at the British Independent Film Awards, and a Best International Film nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards.