Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.At first, the corpse stirs no emotion in On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. The film is from Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni, whose bold debut I Am Not a Witch caused a splash in 2017. Now we are in Zambian capital Lusaka; the dead man in the road is Fred; and the seeming lack of feeling comes from his niece Shula (Susan Chardy), who has just discovered him.The audience have the further distraction of Shula’s outfit: an inflatable Michelin Man homage to hip-hop legend Missy Elliott. Later, we learn it was meant for a fancy dress party. Now, on the phone, her father insists Shula must have misunderstood her uncle’s condition. “Fred’s just like that,” he says.The sequence sets up the film’s skewed surrealism, and the drama that fuels it. Fred, it transpires, is very much dead, while what he was “just like” proves dark indeed: an abuser of Shula and other young relatives. From that ugly truth, Nyoni makes something strange and restlessly ambitious — a tale of secrets loosed at the funeral rite that frames the story, where priggish family members size up the dead man’s assets and judge each other’s grief.The signature of the film is Chardy’s poker face, unruffled in the bedlam. At times, that can feel like a placeholder for something more expressive. But if the movie keeps us at a distance, it also knocks us off balance to bracing effect. Nyoni has a powerfully dreamlike touch. Corridors swim in water while characters sleep in empty pools. And if the movie has a mask of deadpan, caustic wit cuts through — and outrage even more so. ★★★★☆In UK cinemas from December 6 and US cinemas next year
