‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’ Review: Rungano Nyoni Blends Fantasy and Reality in Daring Story of Generational Trauma and Relief | TIFF

A car passes along a dark road at night, then stops when a body appears. The driver, dressed like Missy Elliot in the music video for “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” emerges, takes a look, and then gets back into her car. This is Shula (Susan Chardy), and the body she’s encountered on her way home from a costume party is her dead uncle Fred. As Shula sits in the car and begins to call her dad, dust circles the frame, illuminated by the car lights, creating a ghostly atmosphere in the night. The opening moments of On Becoming A Guinea Fowl set the film’s tone perfectly, preparing us for the sometimes funny, mostly melancholy, and surreal time ahead. In the wake of her uncle’s death, Shula’s tight-knit Zambian family will have to contend with devastating secrets that can no longer be ignored. Rungano Nyoni’s second feature is full of uncanny elements, deeply grounded performances, and unforgettable imagery that make it a compelling watch from an exciting voice in filmmaking.

At first, Shula decides to go to a hotel instead of sticking around for her uncle’s funeral since her family will use her house as the main hub for the proceedings. Eventually, she’s pressured by a group of aunties to rejoin everyone. At the house, Shula and her cousins, including Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), have to work through their complicated relationship with their uncle. Eventually, we learn that Uncle Fred was sexually abusing Shula and other young women in their family. All the praise, ceremony, and mourning for Uncle Fred is stained with unimaginable sorrow and palpable rage. We first learn about Uncle Fred from Bupe (Esther Singini), Shula’s younger cousin, through a video she made sharing what happened to her. Soon enough we hear about Nsansa’s and Shula’s experiences and get an understanding of how this kind of trauma manifests itself in different people. Nsansa, at first, explains her experience with Uncle Fred as a joke, defiantly saying she slapped him in the face and laughed at him when he tried to hurt her. Later, we learn it wasn’t true. “I couldn’t protect myself,” she confesses to Shula later. It’s a devastating moment.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl handles its intense subject matter deftly, understanding that life is full of absurd and awful moments. Uncle Fred’s passing is both a quotidian thing (we all must die), and one that feels unreal because of the harm he caused while he was alive and the pain he left in his wake. The trauma of Shula, Nsansa, and Bupe often goes unspoken outside of themselves, until a heartbreaking scene near the end of the film. The women of their family come to the girls and acknowledge their suffering at the hands of the man they’ve been mourning for days. “If it was in my power, I would stop anything bad from happening to you. We are also hurt, my children,” one of the many aunties at the house says. Together, all the women begin to sing, a collective grieving for what Uncle Fred took from Shula and the rest of the women he abused. It’s also a brief moment of healing release. Shula and Nsansa weep, holding their mothers and letting themselves be held. It’s a film that understands the tension between the collective pull of family and the individual needs and struggles of the people within those families and the cognitive dissonance it can create. The pressure to come together, to not rock the boat in a family focused on traditions is immense, especially in the face of death. Niyoni’s direction is strong enough to guide the film through this tension and hold all the complicated truths that exist within it. It’s breathtaking to see a relatively new voice in film speak out as boldly and as brilliantly as this, especially after her first feature, the BAFTA-winning I Am Not a Witch.

The performances in On Becoming a Guinea Fowl help ground the film, with Chardy as Shula, quiet and dutiful, with a simmering rage underneath. It’s a potent performance that gives the film its North Star. She’s in good company with Chisela, who imbues Nsansa with a playful bravura that’s masking deep wounds. Singini is devastating as the young college student Bupe, who resigns herself after her confession. “He’s dead now, so it’s okay,” she explains to Shula. They are incredible performances that make up the heart of the film, with all three actors laying down the emotional groundwork necessary to stay engaged with the film. The imagery, created in part by Director of Photography David Gallego (who worked on Nyoni’s I Am Not a Witch and the recent Netflix hit, Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge), is also worth noting here, both for its addition to the preternatural mood of the film and its emotional heft. From the ghostly headlights of Shula’s car to a dorm partially flooded with inky black water in the middle of the night, to a flashback image of a small Shula that might be one of the most heartbreaking shots in a film this year, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl understands the power of its visuals.

With its fearless filmmaking and deft handling of its subject material, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is a poignant and unsettling portrait of what happens when a family has to face its trauma.

Grade: A

This review is from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. A24 will release On Becoming a Guinea Fowl theatrically in the U.S. on December 13, 2024.