I Am Not a Witch

Direc­tor Rungano Nyoni’s debut fea­ture is a ​“present-day satire about beliefs in witch­craft”. Filmed in Zam­bia, it takes a seething com­i­cal look at real-life ​‘witch camps’ in Africa, with ani­mal ref­er­ences only Mon­ty Python fans would tru­ly appreciate.

Fol­low­ing a banal inci­dent in her local vil­lage, eight-year-old Shu­la (Mag­gie Mulub­wa) is accused of witch­craft. After a short tri­al she is found guilty, tak­en into state cus­tody and exiled to a witch camp in the mid­dle of a desert. At the camp she takes part in an ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny where she is shown the rules sur­round­ing her new life as a witch. Like the oth­er res­i­dents, Shu­la is tied to a rib­bon which is attached to a coil that perch­es in a large tree. She is told that should she ever cut the rib­bon, she’ll be cursed and trans­formed into a goat.

The director’s lucid, Brecht­ian influ­enced (no sur­prise con­sid­er­ing her the­atre school roots) style works as both a pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive. On the pos­i­tive side, it removes any sense of ana­lyt­ic sub­jec­tiv­i­ty in the episod­ic for­mat – but it also makes the unfold­ing nar­ra­tive hard to fol­low in places. A final trag­ic plot twist is poor­ly under­stood, and sharply exe­cut­ed, deny­ing the sto­ry of the poignant emo­tion­al force it might have col­lat­ed in a more con­ven­tion­al­ly struc­tured dra­ma. This may be Nyoni’s inten­tion, but such arty detach­ment will alien­ate some of the film’s poten­tial audience.

Framed with an impres­sive sym­met­ri­cal com­po­si­tion by David Gal­lego, who also shot Ciro Guerra’s 2015 film Embrace of the Ser­pent in rav­ish­ing mono­chrome, I Am Not a Witch is heav­i­ly stylised in places, with spar­ing use of freeze-frame shots and a sub­tle black and white colour palette, added for dream­like effect.

Hav­ing estab­lished the dis­dain for pagan witch mur­der­ers, who teth­er them to the ground with rib­bons. Nyoni illus­trates this dis­turb­ing real­i­ty by mak­ing great use of these visu­al­ly strik­ing stream­ers, weav­ing them into what resem­bles giant art instal­la­tions. Also wor­thy of ref­er­enc­ing are the stun­ning cos­tume designs by Hol­ly Rebec­ca, a some­time styl­ist for singer Solange Knowles.

Nyoni coun­ter­points the long, deep, sul­try silences of the Zam­bian bush with bright splash­es of music, includ­ing haunt­ing choral chants, jump­ing bursts of Vival­di, dis­ori­en­tat­ing snatch­es of Europop and jazzy per­cus­sive audio trim­mings that blur the line between score and audio design. I Am Not a Witch feels like the emer­gence of a dis­tinc­tive new voice. It’s just a shame that in the last few scenes the view­ers is left adrift among the sym­bol­ism, due to Nyoni’s sparse storytelling.