In the opening moments of Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, we meet our heroine, Shula (played brilliantly by Susan Chardy), driving down a dark road, dressed like Missy Elliott in the music video for “The Rain (Super Duper Fly)”. Much like that 1997 music video, the image is striking, a bit disorienting. Obvious questions arise: where is she going? What requires this outfit? None of these questions get answered because soon after we meet Shula, she’s pulling over to the side of the road. There’s a dead body on the road, and she can tell almost immediately that it belongs to her uncle Fred (Roy Chisha). She calls her mother who doesn’t answer. She calls her father (Henry B.J. Phiri) who seems to miss the urgency of the situation and asks for money. Eventually her cousin Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela) arrives. She’s drunk, but at least she’s willing to help.

Thus is the set-up for Nyoni’s darkly funny domestic drama about a family failing to come to grips with its own history of abuse, and its compliance in perpetuating it. Guinea Fowl dabbles in surreality, though Nyoni has no interest in obfuscation. This is her second feature film after 2017’s I Am Not a Witch. She’s a filmmaker of great cinematic confidence and a fearless storyteller, who focuses on the patriarchal confines within her home country of Zambia. Shula’s family is expansive. You get the sense she hasn’t been directly involved with them for a long while. Her mother (Doris Naulapwa) is Fred’s sibling, one of many strident sisters who now come to the forefront to demand proper respect for their deceased love one. Fred’s young widow, who’s had several children with him, is being accused of not being a proper wife, inattentive, unwilling to stop him from straying toward other women.

Fred’s sisters had many of their own daughters, including Shula and Nsansa, and as the large family comes together it becomes clear that Fred’s presence in their lives was much more sinister and violent than it was with the older generation. His actions have reverberated over generations, and with the official mourning cycle oncoming, the institution of silence is once again being foisted on his victims. Shula begins efforts to talk to the adults in the room, to try and get them to accept the reality of Fred’s life, but she’s brushed aside, discredited, accused of trying to dismantle the family. In one haunting moment, Shula’s mother and aunts corner her and Nsansa and plead their case for continued ignorance. “Don’t you think this caused us pain as well?” they ask. In the same vein, Fred’s sisters conspire to evict the helpless widow from his house, penniless.

Guinea Fowl is the first great film of 2025. It played most of the Fall festivals last year before deciding for a late Winter release. I don’t think there’s a time or place where something like this becomes a commercial success, but Nyoni’s film is an important and worthy film about perpetual abuse cycles. It’s also a stunning showcase for African cinema. Nyoni’s sense of structure and pacing keeps the audience on the edge of their seat, and her skill in framing makes all shots a stunning canvas of visual storytelling. Funny movies about serious subject matter is nothing new, but Guinea Fowl‘s pathways to humor are riveting, borderline scandalous. When you get to the film’s conclusion – which takes the inventive, provocative title and gives it powerful meaning – you understand that you’re in the hands of a master filmmaker.

 

Written and Directed by Rungano Nyoni