17/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: Rungano Nyoni isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty – especially when digging up the past

Cannes, or rather its selected filmmakers, is addressing sexual abuse head on this year. Addressing the silence, the infuriating injustice, the pain. From Judith Godrèche’s short Me Too and her activism, which finally started to change things in #MeToo-resistant France, with more consequences surely still to come, to Julie Keeps Quiet [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Leonardo van Dijl
film profile], the time to scream is now. Loudly, just like a guinea fowl.

Rungano Nyoni’s Un Certain Regard film On Becoming a Guinea Fowl [+see also:
interview: Rungano Nyoni, Susan Chardy
film profile], set in Zambia, still surprises, however: it takes on one man’s sins that others kept paying for, but also provides a very clear-eyed look at how things like that keep on happening, over and over again. There is a support system in place: not for the victims, but for the perpetrator. He holds the power, always, even when he’s dead. And it’s other women as well, not just men, who will make sure of that.

Before things escalate, it’s party time. Shula (Susan Chardy) is driving, dressed to impress in a sparkly mask and the kind of puffy costume that has to be seen to be believed. The music is pumping, life is good. But suddenly, she stops the car. It’s the middle of the night, and there is a man lying in the road.

It’s her Uncle Fred, and he is dead. So far, so funny – she is advised to “sprinkle him with some water”. Her drunken cousin arrives (Elisabeth Chisela, a riot), causing havoc and dancing, and apparently, there is a brothel nearby, so maybe their sweet uncle died “a happy man”. But nobody is happy here, especially not these young women. They have been asked to keep too many secrets, and now they are drowning in them. The flood is coming.

To go from something that feels fantastical to sombre realism isn’t easy. Nyoni doesn’t go as far as, say, Omen [+see also:
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interview: Baloji
film profile], but On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is still very odd. As the family prepares for the funeral, all sorts of things come crawling out of the shadows. Stories are told, then retold, because the truth wasn’t entertaining enough for a fun, drunken anecdote. Soon, everyone is crying, for show – everyone but Shula. And Nsansa, and Bupe, and Uncle Fred’s widow, blamed for his death, which somehow now has something to do with her horrible cooking or lack of homemaking skills. She was 11 years old when they met.

Nyoni’s feature debut, I Am Not a Witch [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rungano Nyoni
film profile], was already great, and now she tries something different. But she is still critical of tradition, which sometimes serves only a select few. Shula looks at the crazy spectacle around her, but there is not much she can do. Instead, she keeps recalling an old show for kids that she used to watch as a girl. Sometimes, Uncle Fred would be around, too – he was around during an especially interesting episode. Guinea fowls are of great use to all the animals in the wild, it was said there. They don’t keep silent; they scream when there is danger approaching. There is not that much screaming here, it could be argued, but make no mistake: this film is mad as hell, and it’s not going to take it any more.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl was produced by Ireland’s Element Pictures, the UK’s BBC Film and Fremantle, and the USA’s A24 Films, which also handles its sales.