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Critics Consensus: I Am Not a Witch approaches real-life injustices with a beguiling blend of sorrow, anger, and humor, marking debuting writer-director Rungano Nyoni as an exciting new talent.
Critic Consensus: I Am Not a Witch approaches real-life injustices with a beguiling blend of sorrow, anger, and humor, marking debuting writer-director Rungano Nyoni as an exciting new talent.
All Critics (71) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (69) | Rotten (2)
Even if writer-director Rungano Nyoni's film were a lesser achievement - less unsettlingly complicated, less bitterly funny, less bluntly sad - it would still have the witch truck, one of the great cinematic images of this or any other year.
Nyoni presents one dazzling set piece after another.
Nyoni, working in English and the local language of Nyanja, has an unforced way of dealing with themes like exploitation, oppression and superstition, showing how easy it can be for nonsense to pass itself off as sense.
A remarkable, strange and politically potent first film.
Nyoni is clearly confident in her vision and the story she wants to tell, and in her capable hands, the result is spellbinding.
Nyoni does an excellent job of keeping an absurd tone while losing none of the gravity of the situation.
In the debut of newcomer and previously untrained 9-year-old Maggie Mulubwa, the actress carries a sorrow that reads both weary and bone deep. She is compelling to watch and impossible to ignore.
This story of an 8-year-old 'witch' literally tethered into servitude is both political exposé and political satire; the sense of sorrow and anger is enhanced by director Rungano Nyoni's artist's appreciation of the absurdity at the root of tragedy.
Nyoni teases our assumptions of culpability. She paints portraits of implied mysticism with elegance and precision, slowing time and framing the girl as the center of the film's universe-not a witch, but a force to be reckoned with nevertheless.
The filmmaker has crafted a portrait of institutionalized chauvinism that's undeniably on point but so vicious that the laughs are few and far between. In other words, this is not a popcorn moviegoer's satire.
Nyoni's film has narrative ambiguities but it's a striking debut.
If you like things to be spelled out, this is not the film for you.
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