While many critics may be tempted to define the film as “magical realist,” we must acknowledge that the concept has been continually misidentified and misused by Western critics and journalists, who for decades have used it as a catch-all for intricate, nonlinear storylines that don’t always fit into the three-act storytelling structures. [W]omen are tasked with laboring and bringing normalcy to an off-kilter world, choosing to seek out other planes of existence to forge kinships and form communities. The act of balancing the personal and the socio-familial becomes so overwhelming that the films can only transgress the realm of the human. In rejecting the limits of human society and its cruelty, [director Rungano] Nyoni’s women find liberation. It may all seem like magic, but it’s all too real, attained through toil and tears.
— Bedatri D. Choudhury (Reverse Shot)
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.