On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula (Susan Chardy) stumbles across the body of her uncle. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family in director Rungano Nyoni’s provocative follow up to I am Not a Witch, her striking debut from 2017. Refusing to participate in her family’s performative displays of grief, the clear-eyed and defiant Shula takes on the role of the guinea fowl, a bird that warns other animals of incipient danger on the savannah, shedding light on the supressed secrets and lies surrounding her childhood. Balancing bustling scenes of domestic realism with flashes of surreal expressionism, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl confirms Nyoni as a director with courage to match her vision.

Notes by David O’Mahony.