I Am Not a Witch (2017)
Title: I Am Not a Witch (2017) We’re soldiers for the government and we’re used to it. We’re used to it and we don’t get tired.” In writer-director Ryongo Nyoni’s I Am Not a Witch, this chant comes not from a platoon of conscripts, but from a group of women being held in one of Zambia’s witch camps. The film satirizes the real-life camps in the southern African nation, where the state confines women who supposedly possess malevolent powers. Nyoni brings to this intrinsically upsetting material a biting sense of humor—exemplified by the witches’ acquiescent chant—that emphasizes the absurdity of a situation in which an administrative state exercises control by exploiting traditional beliefs. In the film, the witches are overseen by an official named Mr. Banda (Henry B.J. Phiri), a man who wields his government credentials as if they themselves were magic, expecting the mere mention of his position to grant him unlimited power. Referring to the women under his watch as “ci...
