On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Shula comes upon her uncle Fred's body on an empty road in the middle of the night and sits looking at it for a while before getting out of the car. Then the funeral begins: wailing, a crowded house, instructions from the aunts, days of cooking. As Shula and her cousins keep the rites going, the side of the family everyone knows about and nobody names comes into view. Rungano Nyoni shot it in Zambia and made the relationship between ceremony and silence the actual subject. The title comes from a children's television programme: the guinea fowl is the bird that shrieks to warn the flock when it sees danger. It won best director in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2024. Who it is for: viewers who like films built around family silence and the machinery of a funeral. Who it is not for: anyone uncomfortable with sexual abuse conveyed by implication.