A24 launched the U.S. theatrical release of Rungano Nyoni’s sophomore feature “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” on March 7, 2025. The film is now available as a streaming rental on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, and YouTube.
I had hoped for a much longer, one-on-one conversation with Rungano Nyoni when I pitched this interview. Instead, I had to settle for a tight 30-minute (virtual) session with both Nyoni and her film’s breakout star, Susan Chardy, who—let me say—is absolutely lovely. The dynamic shifted with both of them present, making it less of a deep dive into “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” centering Nyoni’s journey since her 2017 debut, and more like casually checking in with two people who had been carrying this project for a long time.
This isn’t a complaint, by the way, just context—an acknowledgment that the conversation naturally took on a different shape than I had planned, and evolved in its own way.
I’ve known Nyoni for several years now. My first encounter with her work was via her 2011 short film “Mwansa the Great,” which came out of the now-defunct Focus Features Africa First program, a forward-thinking initiative led by Kisha Imani Cameron that, in hindsight, was ahead of its time.
Our formal introduction came years later, after her striking 2017 feature debut, “I Am Not a Witch,” premiered at Cannes. When the film finally made its way to U.S. theaters more than a year later—a frustratingly common delay for African films—I was a staff writer at IndieWire and interviewed her ahead of its Stateside release.
That was six and a half years ago. Back then, I was writing under a more rigid editorial structure that often dictated my coverage, with checks on how stories needed to be framed for an audience that wasn’t necessarily familiar with them.
Now, in 2025, I run my own platform again where I set the agenda. There’s an interesting parallel there with Nyoni who, in 2018, expressed a deep desire to have full control over her work. In hindsight, it’s clear that we both sought more autonomy—she in her filmmaking, and I in my coverage.
When I interviewed her for “I Am Not a Witch,” she was just coming into her own as a director with international recognition, talking about her admiration for filmmakers who dictate their own terms. Now, years later, she’s still fighting for that autonomy—but from a somewhat different position of power.
The allotted thirty minutes felt more like catching up with an old friend, while also getting to know someone I hadn’t been introduced to prior in Chardy, than a structured interview. At one point, the actress noted that she felt particularly at ease in this space—something about the way the conversation flowed made her feel comfortable enough to be expressive.
“I don’t know what it is,” Chardy said, “but I feel safe here. I’ve done a lot of interviews for this film, but this one feels different.”
And I humbly take credit for that! [Insert wide grin here]
I made the most of what we did discuss and filled in the gaps with what I already know of Nyoni’s approach.
For a film about breaking the silence, “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” invites quiet contemplation. Premiering at Cannes nearly a year ago and now reaching U.S. audiences via A24, it follows a young woman attending a family funeral where long-buried traumas resurface. It’s about unspoken truths, unchallenged traditions, and the cost of finally saying something.
During our conversation, I mentioned how I’d been following coverage of the film since Cannes 2024, and joked about how elusive Nyoni had been. “I kept looking for interviews with Rungano and every time I looked, I’d think: ‘Great! Oh, wait, it’s Susan solo. And then, the next one, ‘Look, it’s Susan by herself again!’ I wondered, ‘Is Rungano hiding?'”
Nyoni laughed, seeming slightly guilty.
“I’m always nervous,” she admitted. “And the production was tough. I still have a hangover from it. That’s why Susan took over, thank God! She handled a lot of the press.”
We spoke about the challenges of making the film, the tensions at its core, and the unpredictability of how audiences have responded to its themes.
“I always check who’s involved when people reach out about my work,” Nyoni said, acknowledging a certain level of scrutiny she’s developed over the years. “The reality is that African cinema still isn’t given the same level of serious engagement as films from other areas. And even when a film does break through, there’s always the question of how it’s being framed or discussed.”
This scrutiny has long been a concern for her. Back in 2018, she spoke about how Western audiences often misread “I Am Not a Witch,” unsure whether they had permission to laugh at its satire. The discomfort of those audiences wasn’t lost on her—she knew they weren’t in on the joke.
With “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” now launching a theatrical release in the U.S., the weight of that reality hasn’t disappeared, but it has shifted slightly.
Chardy said, “It’s unusual for a Zambian film to be released at this scale. Even just knowing that a film in my language [Bemba] is traveling like this—it’s something I wouldn’t have imagined growing up. It’s a step, even if there’s still a long way to go.”
Zambia’s film scene has been a story of sporadic bursts rather than a sustained presence, historically operating on the fringes with limited institutional support and infrastructure.
Nyoni interjected with her perspective on theatrical distribution: “I really do want my films to show in cinema. I don’t care if only two people watch it. I grew up with big screens, and I want this stage for us. I just want to see big African faces staring back at me from the screen. There’s still space for TV and streaming, but cinema matters.”
The road to getting the film made wasn’t just long for Nyoni, to whom the idea came following a dream she had after attending a funeral—it was long for Chardy, too, in a different way. With a background on the stage, “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” was her first screen role. In fact, she was cast just four days before shooting began. “I didn’t know much going in,” the actress said. “I knew who Rungano was, and I’d seen ‘I Am Not a Witch,’ which I thought was just stunning. But when I got the call about this film, I didn’t have all the details yet. But I just knew I had to be part of it.”
Chardy shared that acting had been a long-deferred dream. “Life sort of took me down another way,” she explained. “I had family responsibilities. I saw my friends struggling to make it as actors, and thought, ‘It’s mad, there’s just no way.’ I love my family, and I put my own aspirations on hold.”
She continued, “Eventually, I got to a point where I thought, ‘This itch needs to be scratched. It’s mind-numbing for me not to try.'”
Nyoni, meanwhile, had been searching for Shula for months. “We had gone through so many people. I asked my cousins to audition. I asked my crew to audition. I was running out of time and still wasn’t convinced,” she recalled. “At one point, I even auditioned myself. I sat in front of the camera across from Elizabeth [Chisela], who plays Nsansa, and after about two minutes, I thought, ‘No, I can’t do this. This is not working.'”
She kept looking.
“And when Susan came in, even though she’s nothing like Shula in real life, I saw something in her,” Nyoni said. “There was this… restraint. This way of holding something in, especially when she wasn’t speaking. That was what I needed.”
Chardy, for her part, wasn’t even sure what Nyoni saw in her. “When I walked in, I didn’t really know what she wanted from me,” she admitted with a laugh. “I just trusted that if she saw something, I’d follow her lead.”
At the heart of “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is the question of silence—who keeps it, who enforces it, and who ultimately dares to break it. But as the film explores, silence is rarely just an individual choice—it’s a cultural mechanism of survival, a way of maintaining harmony even at the cost of justice.
Nyoni has spent years thinking about this. “I wanted to show what silence looks like when people expect you to remain silent,” she said. “How that complicity works, how it’s enforced, and how you can be part of it without realizing it.”
It’s a theme she has previously wrestled with cinematically. “I Am Not a Witch” also centered on a girl named Shula, navigating a system that dictated the terms of her existence—though in that film, the silence was institutional, imposed under the guise of spectacle. In “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” the stakes are more intimate, the silences personal and interwoven with family ties.
At one point, we cackled at what I called a “Shula Multiverse”—the fact that the protagonists in both “I Am Not a Witch” and “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” share the name Shula, and the connecting thread being the storyteller behind them.
“There are personal elements in it,” Nyoni acknowledged. “But I spent three years trying to de-personalize the story [in ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’]. I researched other people’s experiences so I could get a clearer idea of what I wanted to do. So it’s a mixture.”
Then, almost as if realizing it in real time, she added, “I guess in some ways, I am Shula. Not literally, obviously, but—there’s a lot of me in her. I didn’t think about it while writing, but later, when I watched Susan, I thought, ‘Oh. That’s me.’ But Susan actually took a different angle with the character—she saw the situations with more complexity than I did.”
That process of widening the lens included researching other women’s experiences and thinking about how silence operates across different levels—familial, societal, generational.
Nyoni reflected on her own reluctance to speak out in certain situations. “I wonder why I find it so difficult sometimes,” she said. “I’m very strong in other aspects of my life. I do a job that not many others do, especially in the UK. So why, with some things, am I silent?”
She further reflected: “I think of film as a space where I can be freer than in real life. It’s a place where I feel comfortable asking uncomfortable questions.”
That same tension—between expression and restraint—became central to shaping Shula’s performance. Trust between Nyoni and Chardy was essential in navigating this dynamic. Much of the film’s power comes from Chardy’s ability to convey complex emotions without dialogue—something that wasn’t always easy.
“I remember struggling with certain scenes,” the actress said. “Shula doesn’t say a lot, but she sees everything. And the hardest thing was showing what’s happening in her head without making it obvious. There were moments where I wanted to show more, to react more, and Rungano would pull me back. She kept reminding me that Shula is processing everything, that she’s internal. It was about finding a balance between showing what she’s feeling and holding it in.”
Nyoni nodded. “It’s about restraint. It’s why I say Susan isn’t like Shula in real life—Susan is very open, expressive. But Shula… she’s almost the opposite. That’s a hard thing to play.”
One such moment in the film—a quiet but memorable scene—occurs when Shula watches the community’s elder women perform a mourning ritual on their hands and knees. Her expression shifts between emotions: discomfort, curiosity, frustration, maybe even guilt, seemingly all at once, yet seamlessly.
It was a moment that resonated with me personally—the complexity of confronting cultural expectations while acknowledging the internal conflict that can arise when questioning traditions. During our conversation, I shared how, as someone from a Nigerian-Cameroonian background who has spent most of my life in the U.S., there are times when I’ve asked myself whether I’m being unintentionally disrespectful of the cultural “norms” held onto by the generations before mine, even when I find myself questioning their relevance in the present. Nyoni understood exactly what I meant.
“That’s the thing, isn’t it?” she said. “You grow up in a certain culture, and even when you start to see the problems in it, there’s still that hesitation—like, am I the one being unfair? Am I the one being too harsh? But at the same time, if you don’t question it, nothing changes.”
Nyoni was careful, though, to make a distinction: “It’s not about rejecting culture outright. People often misinterpret my films sometimes. They think I’m trying to say ‘This culture is bad,’ but that’s not it at all. Culture is dynamic—it changes. The problem is when certain things get frozen in time and weaponized against people.”
She gave an example from her own life. “When my grandmother died, there was this expectation that all the women in the family would stay overnight at the house, looking after everyone. But then someone in the family—someone ‘high up’—said, ‘No, we’re not doing that anymore. We’re changing it.’ And suddenly, this thing that had always been a rule just… wasn’t anymore.”
The filmmaker elaborated: “The culture worked when it worked. But this culture of silence—where people use bits of tradition to weaponize and force you into silence—that’s what I struggle with.”
She recalled moments of questioning this. “My mum would tell me things about our country, and I’d say, ‘No, no, no—that’s not what used to happen. This is what used to happen, Mum.'”
Pushing back against her mother’s understanding of certain traditions, she recognized how culture evolves—sometimes in ways that distort its original purpose. “Because culture can change. But people don’t always see that. It’s a mixture, a sort of bastardization of what was ideal, used to serve other interests.”
That awareness of how traditions shift—sometimes thoughtfully, sometimes for convenience—extends to how Nyoni approaches storytelling itself. She resists rigid classifications, whether in cultural practices or in cinema.
When discussing “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’s” stylistic approach, the filmmaker hesitated to categorize it too narrowly. “I think people like labels because they help them know what they’re watching, or how to sell something,” she admitted. “But I don’t think about that when I’m writing. I’m just trying to tell a story in the way that feels right.”
That approach has evolved since “I Am Not a Witch,” which she previously cited as influenced by filmmakers like Yorgos Lanthimos, Michael Haneke, and Thomas Vinterberg. During our 2018 conversation, she spoke about admiring Lanthimos for his use of absurdity, Haneke for his ability to make audiences sit with discomfort, and Vinterberg for his raw emotionality.
While “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” still carries some of that distinct detachment, it leans more into Haneke’s restrained realism. At the same time, its familial tension, buried secrets, and generational reckoning place it within the emotional territory of Vinterberg’s work—notably his 1998 debut feature, “Festen” (The Celebration), the first film of the Dogme 95 movement, with its unflinching portrayal of a family forced to confront long-buried abuse. Yet, while Vinterberg leans into bare, explosive confrontations, Nyoni opts for a quieter, more internal devastation.
“I don’t think I could have made this film back then,” she reflected. “‘I Am Not a Witch’ was louder, more external. This stays inside people.”
And unlike “I Am Not a Witch” over six years ago, audiences have apparently responded differently to the tonal shifts in her new work.
Any hesitation to laugh seems to have faded—not because “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is lighter (it isn’t), but because its humor is embedded in the fabric of its reality. However jolting the scenarios might be, the absurdity isn’t heightened for effect; it exists naturally within the world Nyoni has built.
“I don’t know if people are more comfortable now, or if this film just doesn’t give them that same dilemma,” she mused. “It’s still got humor, but it’s different. It’s… lower to the ground.”
That “lower to the ground” feeling makes the storytelling less of a fable, more of a reckoning.
Susan nodded at that. “I think that’s why it hits people in different ways. You don’t have to be from Zambia to understand it. We had a woman at a Q&A from India who said, ‘This is my culture too.’ The details are different, but the power structures, the expectations, the way silence is maintained—it’s the same story.”
As our conversation wrapped up, I asked both of them what’s next. Chardy, having made such a striking debut, is being deliberate about her next steps. “There are a few things I’m looking at, and honestly, it’s a bit daunting,” she said. “When you come out of the gate with something like this, you feel a pressure to be cautious about picking the next thing.”
She laughed before adding, “Rungano has set the bar really high for me. This experience, this film—it’s something I’m so proud of. It just makes me even more careful about what I do next.”
I turned to Nyoni with a knowing smirk. “So, are we going to have to wait another ten years for the next Rungano Nyoni film?”
“I hope not,” she said. Then, after a beat, deadpan: “But, you know, I take my time.”
She then offered something unexpected—rare for her, as she seldom speaks on the record about upcoming projects: “I’m writing. I want to do something fun.” She paused, reconsidering. “Actually, maybe ‘fun’ is the wrong word. Just something that makes me laugh, something lighter.”
Then, almost as an afterthought: “And I’m also working on a sci-fi film set in Botswana.”
I blinked. “Whaaaat?”
She nodded, amused: “Yeah, and it’s scaring me a bit.”
I asked why.
“Because it has all these visual effects, and I don’t want to be bogged down in effects,” she admitted, noting not just her lack of experience in that area but also the inevitable challenge of raising the necessary budget. “But the idea won’t leave me alone, so I have to at least try.”
That led to some back-and-forth about sci-fi in the African cinema context, referencing Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu’s “Pumzi” (2009), the genre-breaking work of Jean-Pierre Bekolo, and others, as well as the limitations of Western genre conventions when applied to African storytelling traditions. Nyoni shrugged. “At the end of the day, we’re all just telling stories.”
For now, though, she’s focused on the writing: “I have to finish the script first. That’s the real battle.”
And while her upcoming mysterious sci-fi project is still in early stages, its pull on her speaks to a thematic throughline in her work—a persistent curiosity about power, complicity, and the stories we tell ourselves.
Whether with grounded realism or speculative fiction, she remains drawn to narratives that challenge the status quo.
And with that, our conversation ended—not neatly, but like “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” itself, leaving more to think about, more to unravel, and more to say.
A24 launched the U.S. theatrical release of Rungano Nyoni’s sophomore feature “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” on March 7, 2025. The film is now available as a streaming rental on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, and YouTube.
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