Director: Rungano Nynoi

Stars: Elizabeth Chisela, Henry B.J. Phiri, Susan Chardy

Zambian-Welsh writer-director Nyoni’s striking follow up to her supremely confident debut feature ‘I am Not a Witch’ is a brooding, darkly comic examination of contemporary Zambian society with surreal touches. We first encounter middle-class woman Shula (Chardy) sitting behind the wheel of her car in a bejewelled helmet resembling a character from the Death Race 2000 remake. She has just attended a fancy dress party, although her outfit could also be read as a signifier of her forward-looking modernity, or even her righteous feminine anger. Shula has just found the body of her uncle on the road but seems curiously unmoved as she calls her mother in the family compound to tell her the news. As the funeral arrangements proceed, rumours abound about Uncle Fred’s impropriety while the families squabble over the cause of Fred’s death. Then Shula sees a video, which confirms her suspicions. The nature of the uncle’s behaviour is revealed early in the film, consequently the drama feels a little muted. The solution to the titular riddle when it comes is dramatically satisfying, and the final sequence in which the family and in-laws argue furiously is mercilessly rendered. It’s a spiky study of crippling patriarchal traditions with the menfolk broadly depicted as lazy authoritarians. Tellingly, the camera keeps us at a distance during Shula’s confrontation with her father where she tries to find out what exactly he knew.

David Willoughby

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