On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Rungano Nyoni follows up her much acclaimed 2017 debut, I Am Not a Witch, with this intriguing combination of subverted indie movie tropes. British-Zambian model Susan Chardy makes a striking debut in her first acting role as Shula, a Western-educated young woman from a middle-class Zambian suburb. Late one night, she almost runs over the dead body of her uncle, lying in the middle of a road. At the funeral and other family and community functions that follow, Shula is torn between being the healing force that keeps her chaotic extended family together and an agent of destruction, calling out the hypocrisy and secrets that have gone too long unacknowledged by nearly all in her family. The narrative follows the pattern of many quirky, 90s-era Sundance comedies about young people falling into old patterns of behavior after returning to the culture that formed after forging a new, more sophisticated life for themselves away from their family, but the setting, perspective, and cultural idiosyncrasies of Nyoni's story take this familiar kind of story in new, fresh directions.