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On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Play trailer 2:04 Poster for On Becoming a Guinea Fowl PG-13 Mar 2025 1h 35m Comedy Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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100% Tomatometer 104 Reviews 66% Popcornmeter 100+ Ratings
On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across the body of her uncle. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family, in filmmaker Rungano Nyoni's surreal and vibrant reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves.
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On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

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Critics Consensus

A vibrant exploration of family and social mores, On Becoming a Guineau Fowl marks another superb effort from writer-director Rungano Nyoni.

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Critics Reviews

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Adam Kempenaar Filmspotting Jul 12
4.5/5
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is a reckoning, and Nyoni proves to be a force as a filmmaker. Go to Full Review
Claudia Puig FilmWeek (LAist) May 9
It feels so specific and also universal, which are my favorite kinds of movies. Go to Full Review
Dwight Brown DwightBrownInk.com Apr 20
3.5/4
Gets more thoughtful and empowering by the minute. A modern fable. A fable that’s a treasure. Go to Full Review
Marlon Wallace The M Report (WBOC.com) 1d
It's also about how difficult it is for a woman or anyone to dissent or try to push back. It's reminiscent of a recent Oscar nominee in Best Documentary Feature, To Kill a Tiger (2023), which had an arguably happier ending than this one. Go to Full Review
Andrew Kendall Stabroek News Sep 19
What becomes thrilling about how Nyoni weaves the story in “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is how it slowly pulls back the curtain to both affirm and problematise our assumptions of where we assume it might lead. Go to Full Review
John Serba Decider Sep 10
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is a powerful drama with a distinctively strong and original voice and vision. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Roman Mar 31 Damn, ow, fantastic but ooooowwwww. See more Christy L Mar 27 Compelling story about death and cultural rituals in an entirely different setting. See more Roy J Mar 11 The sexual assault plot is hard-hitting, but I also found the Zambia culture depicted in the movie to be very compelling. Glad A24 distributed this African movie in the US. See more James M @LizardKing75 4d I would say that this is a decent film, not a great film, but decent. It is nice to see cinema coming out of the African (sub-saharan) continent to give us a glimpse of the world through African eyes. Not just your typical conflict diamonds, poverty, misery, famine and war in Africa movies, but a more genuine take on the situation from people who actually grew up in the region and live there. I sympathize a lot with the alienation that the main character feels from her traditional culture. I share that same sense of alienation in that I have always felt disconnected from my own native culture, sort of a stranger in a strange land phenomena. "Traditional" cultures just seem so strange to me. Even when I grew up in one. I also liked the power & money dynamic between the different families during the "trial". It is a very topical narrative in that it shows the rich screwing over the poor yet again. 3.5/5 See more Kai L. @psocid Nov 24 This movie accomplished everything it set out to do in an intelligent if subtle way, one small bit of literalism aside. It's stylistic choices, presentation and ending reminded me much of any film by Sean Baker, who has also been known to fall into the literalism trap that mush-minded movie watchers have required of today's movie makers. It's laden with integrated metaphors that don't draw the story or characters even slightly off course to obtain as they are well rooted in place, but it takes a keen eye to spot them all, indicating at times the level of love, thought, and consideration that went into the making of this film. The film is slow, meant for people who haven't rotted their attention spans on social media, and mislabeled as a comedy, but it is powerful, potent, and potentially even important. Complainers citing the lack of trigger warning should realize that films tell you exactly what they're rated for, if only you choose to look. See more Roger P Nov 22 Way overrated. 100%, are you kidding me? Slow as molasses. terrible cinematography the screen is so dark the entire time it’s hard to see anything. See more Read all reviews
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

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Movie Info

Synopsis On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across the body of her uncle. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family, in filmmaker Rungano Nyoni's surreal and vibrant reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves.
Director
Rungano Nyoni
Producer
Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Tim Cole
Screenwriter
Rungano Nyoni
Distributor
A24
Production Co
A24, BBC Film, Element Pictures
Rating
PG-13 (Thematic Material|Sexual Abuse|Suggestive References|Some Drug Use)
Genre
Comedy, Drama
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Mar 7, 2025, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Apr 8, 2025
Runtime
1h 35m
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