On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2025)
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2025)
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Shula, played by Susan Chardy, is worn out as she drives home in a Missy Elliott costume she wore to a friend's party when she notices something off. She slows down, reverses and realizes it’s the dead body of her Uncle Fred. She calls other members of her family to tell them about her discovery, which sets off a series of events that will bring to light painful secrets and buried memories within her large Zambian family. Shula and her cousins become closer as the extensive preparations for her uncle's funeral begin, as Shula realizes the pain this uncle caused the family's female members for generations.
"On Becoming a Guinea Fowl" by Rungano Nyoni is a surreal and moving account of a family's unresolved trauma. The funeral that follows is a huge event that forces younger women to run errands and take care of the guests' needs because it brings dozens of relatives together in one house. At the same time, Shula experiences her own emotional rollercoaster, concealing her disdain for her uncle—possibly even disgust—before realizing how many girls in the family he had previously harmed and how he had continued to harm his young wife. At this solemn occasion, Shula's family, siding with the abuser, attacks the widow and places blame on her for his death. The complex film "On Becoming a Guinea Fowl" is about survivors' silence and repression, as well as the grief that persists after the assailant has passed away. With her visually stunning debut, "I Am Not a Witch," Nyoni burst onto the international film scene and continues to develop her distinctive style.
In “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” she incorporates the significance of the title’s bird to explore the family’s story, explaining through flashbacks to a kid’s program that the guinea fowl helps keep the rest of the animals safe by warning them of potential predators. But this is just one creative use of nonlinear imagery to develop her story, as Shula’s dreams become stranger and stranger as her uncle’s death takes a toll on her. At various points, Shula sees visions of her younger self or her younger self steps in for the grown-up Shula, illustrating how she feels at that particular moment. Nyoni channels other filmmakers like Luis Buñuel’s editing tricks that make a viewer (and Shula) question if what they’re seeing is real and Andrei Tarkovsky’s reflective use of water in “Nostalghia,” especially in a dream sequence where water seems to be flooding around her sleeping relatives but no one notices except Shula, who walks past in awe as the vision ripples and dances across the screen.
In a similar vein, the screenplay by Nyoni offers some respite in the form of a streak of absurdist humor and the emergence of a relationship between Shula and her relatives. The tone becomes bittersweet as Shula bonds with her cousins, Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela) and Bupe (Esther Singini), and realizes how much they have in common. The outgoing Nsansa fights her own demons and expresses her pain in a vastly different way than Shula, who takes on more of a poker-faced approach, hiding her emotions from her family. Chardy doesn't tell the story of Shula. Years of keeping secrets are reflected in her stiff face, steady shoulders, and detached stare. She won't weep for a person who doesn't deserve it. She attempts to talk with her parents about Uncle Fred’s crimes but finds her mother is too grief-stricken to reckon with the pain of others and her father is too checked out, choosing instead to enjoy his life and not worry about others’ needs. Much of “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” centers on the experiences of the women in the family, swapping gossip, making decisions, or worse, ignoring what they know of the situation.
They either keep the violence going or stop it, and the movie makes it clear that each of them must choose for themselves. A tribute to breaking family secrets' silence and defying tradition for the sake of empathy, "On Becoming a Guinea Fowl" is a watch that is uncomfortable but captivating. With equal ease and effectiveness, Nyoni and cinematographer David Gallego conjure drama and dreams. To immerse the audience in Shula's experience, Gallego, the director of breathtaking films like "Embrace of the Serpent," "Birds of Passage," and "I am Not a Witch," blurs the line between reality and perception. The audience must also decide for itself how "On Becoming a Guinea Fowl" will affect them the next time they see their family members in the wrong if each woman in the movie is forced to make a decision with the information they have.
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