AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Rungano Nyoni was grieving. Her grandmother had died, and her great uncle had issued an edict that the funeral not feature the wailing and singing and house visits of typical Zambian mourning. Instead, Nyoni's ancestral village was quiet. And in the stillness, the British filmmaker had such a vivid dream that she wrote it down.
RUNGANO NYONI: I don't know why I was writing it out. I was sort of no longer in a very great mental state, and I just started writing it out. And a couple of hours later, the sun comes up, and I'd written out what is this film.
RASCOE: The film is called "On Becoming A Guinea Fowl." It starts with the death of a character known as Uncle Fred, his body found on an empty road late at night.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL")
SUSAN CHARDY: (As Shula) Just look at the situation. Uncle Fred (non-English language spoken) dead body (non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, non-English language spoken).
CHARDY: (As Shula, laughter).
RASCOE: Shula, Uncle Fred's niece, is immediately drawn into the traditions that writer and director Nyoni so missed. But Uncle Fred was a serial sexual assailant. Shula herself is a survivor of sexual assault, and underneath all the crying and careful choreography, a full Zambian mourning is a silent unease. Susan Chardy plays Shula in her feature film debut, and she says it was a challenge to play this reluctant mourner.
CHARDY: The challenge of it was kind of trying to find this voice and trying to find the ability to be heard when you're not speaking. So it was quite - Shula's - she's a complex kind of layered character who internalizes everything, and I myself do not internalize everything. So that was the challenge and the beauty of getting to inhibit this space of quiet observation and deep introspection.
RASCOE: This is a movie about a family in Zambia, but this is a universal story, right? And there's often a question of, what do you do? The person did some horrible things. This family member did some horrible things, but now they're dead. Do you just sweep it under the rug? Do you face it?
NYONI: Oh, it's complicated because I had different motives all the time that came to light as to how I wanted to approach the film. Of course, it's about someone who's dead and how you deal with that trauma. But I also was interested in how you can become complicit in the silence also as a victim.
And I thought it was brave, by the way, when, like, the #MeToo movement - I found it so fascinating. I thought people are just saying things out loud. That's incredible, right? Because at least in my family - in each family, you have the overall Zambian culture. You have Bemba culture, which is my tribe, but you also have a culture within certain families, you know, that are upheld, as we can all maybe relate to.
And it's also really complicated 'cause a lot of people also talk around women and their silence. Why didn't she say something, you know? - especially when women are, like, vocal in real life. You can find strong, vocal, independent women who are still not able to speak about certain things. It makes it complicated 'cause you're not only dealing with trauma. You're also dealing with shame, and it's the shame around it that keeps the silence.
So I was interested in exploring that and the opposite of that - the opposite of what I was seeing. And I wanted to show it how it reflects in our society and why it's difficult to speak up but why it's still important to speak up, no matter how difficult it is, even though it feels like nothing can change.
RASCOE: I was fascinated watching the funeral traditions.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, crying).
(CROSSTALK)
RASCOE: It felt like such a significant part of the movie, just seeing people on their knees walking into the house, the apologies, the way you're supposed to apologize. And I felt very connected to it even though it's not my culture because I feel like a lot of that happens around funerals, even though the actual traditions may be different.
CHARDY: I mean, I think at some of the Q&As, people would ask me, you know, does that really happen? And I'm sitting there thinking, actually, yeah, it does really happen. And also there's the equivalent of what happens here. You just are not making that connection. So I'm really happy to hear that you have made these connections between the two, whereas something that someone might look at - you know, tie it down to being Zambian culture, but actually, there's something that correlates to that that happens when we go to funerals in England or, you know, in America.
Those scenes, for me, being a part of them was just such - it was so spiritual and just incredibly moving, which obviously helped for my performance - just the voices, and there's so much going on. The reality of being at these funerals when you are someone of Shula's age who's at these funerals - there's so much going on for you that you've got to juggle between being dutiful and being there. You're catching up with your friends, and you're doing this.
But along all these things that Shula's kind of doing and being a part of - serving the uncles and orchestrating all of this - she's got this thing that's kind of festering inside of her, that's just sitting there, that she's not really being allowed or given the time to deal with. So she's operating whilst carrying this thing.
So yeah, it was really nice to be able to focus on certain things specifically, within the activity around the funeral and focus on that and then move on to something else. And I actually learned a lot about my own tradition whilst filming these.
RASCOE: Can you talk about the dynamic, Rungano, between the elder women and the younger women in this? - because you have the older women who have made choices and say they're defending the younger generation, but then you have the younger generation that's pushing back.
NYONI: Yeah. This is also the fascinating thing about our culture because one of the things was discussed during the development process - and I hear this a lot 'cause I write other films and usually women leads. And the thing that people like to discuss - and I think it's a concept that's true to Britain - is about - but your character doesn't have agency because they don't see that - right? - because she's not speaking up, so therefore, she doesn't have agency. I said, no, but it's shown in a different way because we are a collective society. We're not a society of individuals.
I fundamentally really believe this. I think our mothers are trying to prepare us for a reality that we just don't want to even engage in. So in reality, women do get attacked. Women don't get believed. Women get scapegoated, and there's nothing you can do to avoid that.
RASCOE: Yeah.
NYONI: But then, I think the message is you still shouldn't allow that to make you quiet, I guess. And then the younger generation are always just trying to change the rules, right? So the older ones are trying to live within the rules - that society - and then the younger ones are trying to change the rules. And that's where they sort of, yeah, butt heads.
RASCOE: The name of the film, "On Becoming A Guinea Fowl" - and in the movie, we learn that guinea fowl - they're supposed to alert the rest of the savanna to when danger arises. And part of this film is about, I guess, who's going to speak up? Who's going to alert? And the danger was Uncle Fred. He's dead now, but there's still danger - right? - because all of this pain is within.
CHARDY: Yeah.
NYONI: That's a good one. That's very good.
CHARDY: Beautiful. Yeah.
NYONI: I haven't heard it said so succinctly.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
NYONI: I've been trying to explain for, like, three years.
CHARDY: Write it down. Quick, Rungano, write it down.
NYONI: Susan will know.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
NYONI: Every time I try to explain things, I'm, like, I feel it's like - I don't know. It's like, you know, silence and, like, complicitness, and I used to talk around it, and you've just said it so perfectly.
RASCOE: Do you look at your work as a way of speaking out, helping to protect the rest of the world around you, or at least shine a light on it?
NYONI: Yeah, I think it's for the world. I think, essentially, it's probably for me. I find it difficult to speak up. I still do. I'm still trying to find a balance. I'm still learning. And I think it was born from that fascination of really finding other people being brave enough to do that, and I found that really it was like an alien thing to me.
RASCOE: That's director Rungano Nyoni and actor Susan Chardy. Their film "On Becoming A Guinea Fowl" is in theaters now. Thanks to you both.
NYONI: Thank you so much.
CHARDY: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF GOGO PENGUIN'S "SATURNINE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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