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I AM NOT A WITCH

By Rungano NYONI

THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - as FEST

Fantasy - Completed 2017

Festivals
& Awards

Directors' Fortnight 2017

Toronto - TIFF 2017

Discovery

Busan IFF 2017

Flash Forward

Stockholm IFF 2017

Stockholm XXVIII Competition Best Debut Award

AFI FEST 2017

New Auteurs

Sundance Film Festival 2018

Spotlight

- Year of production
- 2017
- Genres
- Fantasy
- Countries
- UNITED KINGDOM, FRANCE
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Duration
- 95 mn
- Director(s)
- Rungano NYONI
- Cast
- Margaret MULUBWA, Henry PHIRI, Nancy MULILO
- Producer(s)
- Juliette GRANDMONT (CLANDESTINE FILMS), Emily MORGAN (SODA PICTURES), Titus KREYENBERG (UNA FILM)
- Synopsis
- Part magic realist fable and part gendered social critique, Rungano Nyoni’s debut feature focuses on a young girl who is banished from her village in Zambia and sent to a camp for exiled witches.
  
  In her striking and assured debut feature, I am not a Witch, Rungano Nyoni upends all conventions of onscreen sorcery, offering a fresh cinematic vision that will haunt the audience long after the film's final moments.
  
  When nine-year-old Shula (the subdued but unforgettable Margaret Mulubwa) is accused of witchcraft, she is sent away to a "witch camp" to live in abysmal conditions alongside other women who've been exiled in order to be forgotten. As is the custom, Shula is fitted with a spindle on her back, from which a long white ribbon runs: a "security measure" to ensure she won't fly off. On her first night in the camp she's told she may cut the ribbon, but doing so will turn her into a goat. Faced with this non-choice (Nyoni's scathing satire of patriarchal control runs throughout), Shula remains tethered — to the camp, its exploitative manager, and a cruelly unjust world.
  
  With its narrative ellipses and achingly beautiful cinematography (shot by Embrace of the Serpent's David Gallego), I am not a Witch blurs the lines between reality and surrealism, fable and fact. It also marks the emergence of an unmissable new talent.

I AM NOT A WITCH

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards