Like I Am Not a Witch, her 2017 film, Rungano Nyoni’s second feature offers a marriage of folklore, societal injustice, ritual and wild flights of fancy.
An arresting opening sequence introduces Shula (Susan Chardy), a returning émigré in a Missy Elliott costume, who finds her uncle dead in the middle of the road one night. She drily reports this grim spectacle to her father and is soon joined by her giddy cousin Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela). “The big man died a happy man,” Nsansa guffaws, noting his inappropriate apparel and proximity to the local brothel. Uncle Fred, we soon realise, was a paedophile and a rapist.
Nsansa’s recollections of his abuse stir similar memories for the cool, stoical Shula, alongside a half-remembered children’s animal-themed TV show, about the guinea fowl, whose loud squawking alerts other animals to the presence of nearby predators.
This splendidly sardonic drama from the Zambian-Welsh director drowns out these repressed traumas with a gaggle of aunties and absurdly elaborate funeral arrangements. Any one of these women relatives could and should have raised the alarm. Older relatives refuse to speak or think ill of the dead. Others accept their fate. “Don’t worry about it. He’s dead now, so it’s okay,” younger cousin Bupe, one of Fred’s victims (Esther Singini), says with a shrug.
‘When these women left home there were rumours that they were sent to Europe to be concubines for black soldiers’
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Meanwhile, Shula is chastised for not looking suitably traumatised or grief-stricken. She rolls her eyes as she dictates an extravagant memorial leaflet describing Fred as a dearly missed, irreplaceable father figure and as her relatives crawl, literally, in mourning. Most outrageously, Fred’s broken, too-young wife (Norah Mwansa) is scapegoated and punished for not looking after him sufficiently.
With the cinematographer David Gallego, the sound designer Olivier Dandré and a superb ensemble cast, Nyoni has crafted indelible tableaux, powered by dark survivors’ humour, blistering originality and retaliatory fury.
In cinemas from Friday, December 6th
