In one pivotal scene in Rungano Nyoni’s masterful film On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, Shula (Susan Chardy) and her often drunk cousin Nsana (Elizabeth Chisela) are hiding out from family members by drinking in a closet. The women are soon joined by numerous aunties who have been clogging up the house ever since Shula found her Uncle Fred (Roy Chisha) lying dead on the road one night. Jam-packed in the tight space, the sense of claustrophobia that the film has slowly been building is practically suffocating here.

While the sequence provides a temporary release valve for the feelings blocking up the family’s emotional pipe, Nyoni is far from ready to let loose the pressure completely.

The fact is nothing is fully purged when it comes to family, especially when there are cultural norms to abide by. This is something Shula is struggling to navigate in On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, everywhere she turns someone is telling her what to do and, more importantly, what not to tell others. While this is prevalent in the days-long funeral ceremony for her uncle, it started decades before.

The weight of all of these family secrets piled on the backs of family members is beginning to break them down and causing them to buckle from the inside out.

Frequently focusing on Shula’s face, which becomes increasingly weary and annoyed as the film goes on, Nyoni captures just how damaging family secrets can be. This is especially true when they are often covered in the cloak of ritual. Shula encounters this head-on when her numerous aunties question why she is not indulging in the same performative grief that they are. While her stoic face during these moments evokes laughter from the audience, the humour in the film is rather deceptive.

Using dark comedic surrealist beats to ease audiences into this Zambian tale while slowly disarming them, Nyoni slowly pulls the audience into the deep end of a tense pool of emotions. As Shula attempts to move through the complicated maze of family expectations, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl highlights how the cycle of trauma, frequently tied to the things unsaid, cannot be broken through silence.

Although he is dead, Uncle Fred’s many secrets still gag many in the family from beyond the grave.

In making Shula the connective thread in this familial web, one where the women are just as guilty in upholding the patriarchal structure by withholding that which should be said, Nyoni weaves a stirring indictment of those who are the keeper of secrets at the sacrifice of others. One where those who claim to be all about upholding family are quick to lay accusatory blame on Uncle Fred’s widow, the mother of his numerous children, without giving a thought to the hardship she has endured that will most likely continue.

A masterful exploration of the secrets that eat away at a family like termites devouring wood, Nyoni creates a mosaic of emotions that is at times amusing, claustrophobic, and utterly heartbreaking. A brilliant work on every level, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is one of the year’s best works.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Get more That Shelf TIFF coverage here.