It’s been a great day for glimpses into exciting new international films. This morning, we got our first look at The Girl With The Needle, the official Danish entry for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards, and now, we’re also getting the trailer for On Becoming A Guinea Fowl, the 2024 Cannes premiere from Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni (I Am Not A Witch). The story of On Becoming A Guinea Fowl is told in both English and Bemba, a language spoken primarily in northeastern Zambia.
The trailer is quite surreal, despite opening with its main character, Shula (Susan Chardy) in a pretty spot-on “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” Missy Elliott helmet complete with giant parachute pants. It’s in this getup that she first discovers the dead body of her uncle lying limp in the middle of the road.
Accusations, in-fighting, and skepticism begin amongst Shula’s family almost immediately after the discovery. “As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family, in filmmaker Rungano Nyoni’s surreal and vibrant reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves,” the film’s synopsis reads. “She doesn’t look like someone who’s seen a corpse. Her eyes are so dry,” one family member speculates in the newly-shared clip. Later, a different woman alludes to people pointing fingers and “accusing each other of murder and witchcraft.”
Somehow, all of this has to do with a TV show the characters used to watch as kids that had something to do with guinea fowl. The way it’s incorporated into this trailer almost recalls I Saw The TV Glow, another dreamlike A24 release this year. “Initially the tone was meant to be more absurd, and then somehow as the film went on, it became more tonally depressing and dark,” Nyoni said of her project. “It’s just something that transformed during shooting. It somehow became cheap to make a joke out of everything.”
On Becoming A Guinea Fowl also stars Elizabeth Chisela and Henry B.J. Phiri. The film premieres March 7 in theaters.
English (US) ·