Rungang Nyoni’s I Am Not A Witch opens in the backseat of a small bus as it transports passengers through the sparse Zambian countryside. Against the frenzied score of Vivaldi strings, the bus rambles along the uneven terrain toward an enormous sculpture of a cartoonish human head; its eyes wide and searching, its mouth agape. The manic score cuts out as the bus comes to an abrupt stop and the passengers disembark, all of them black except for one young, white female. We watch through the bus windows as these passengers-cum-anthropological tourists observe over a low metal fence a group of women arranged on the ground, as if on display at a human zoo. From each of the women’s backs spools a long white ribbon that billows in the wind; a harness, we hear the guide tell the tourists, that is used to keep the women from flying away.
- 8/30/2018
- MUBI
The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced the films that will be featured in their New Auteurs and American Independents sections at the upcoming AFI Fest 2017 presented by Audi. Selections include a number of lauded features from around the festival circuit, including Cannes offerings like “I Am Not a Witch,” SXSW favorites like “Gemini” and “Mr. Roosevelt,” the Sundance breakout “Thoroughbreds,” and Joseph Kahn’s Toronto Midnight Madness favorite “Bodied,” among others.
Highlighting first- and second-time feature film directors, New Auteurs is designed as the festival’s platform for upcoming filmmakers from all over the world to showcase their new films. This year, the section includes 11 films, nine of which come from female directors. Similarly, AFI Fest’s American Independents section aims to represent the best of this year’s independent filmmaking. Pushing boundaries of form and content across narrative and documentary cinema, this section includes 11 films from both fresh...
Highlighting first- and second-time feature film directors, New Auteurs is designed as the festival’s platform for upcoming filmmakers from all over the world to showcase their new films. This year, the section includes 11 films, nine of which come from female directors. Similarly, AFI Fest’s American Independents section aims to represent the best of this year’s independent filmmaking. Pushing boundaries of form and content across narrative and documentary cinema, this section includes 11 films from both fresh...
- 10/16/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
The Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes this year was enlivened by the fortuitous programming of a number of films about children channeling the bounding energy of their young protagonists, whether Sean Baker’s precocious “hidden homeless” scampering around cheap motels in Orlando in The Florida Project, Jonas Carpignano’s bracing faux-adults spitting slang and smoking cigs in a Romani community in Siciliy in A Ciambra, or the young Joan of Arc, singing and dancing in Bruno Dumont’s Jeannette.More passive than all these kids so willing to act out in difficult circumstances is Shula (Maggie Mulubwa), the young Zambian girl accused of witchcraft in Zambia-born, Wales-based director Rungano Nyoni’s bold debut feature, I Am Not a Witch. In fact, this young girl has no name and is nearly unable to speak up for herself. In the film’s opening scenes, she is accused of being a witch and, failing to deny it,...
- 5/31/2017
- MUBI
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