The Ribbon and the Rain: A Film Review of I Am Not a Witch

Abstract

This review reads Rungano Nyoni’s I Am Not a Witch as a satirical anatomy of accusation rather than a cinematic “explanation” of witchcraft. The film’s opening tableau—women in uniform tethered by ribbons for tourist consumption—teaches the viewer how to look, then indicts the cruelty and profit hidden in that gaze. Shula’s accusation is shown as a social process: misfortune is narrated into certainty; authority is recruited to stabilise that certainty through tests and protocols; and the state appears not as absence but as procedure without protection. The witch camp functions as bureaucracy, spectacle, and income stream, where coerced confession becomes communal resolution, and the ribbon operates as both leash and legal status. Nyoni’s critique widens through the monetisation of the child’s body—used to identify thieves, promise rain, and entertain television audiences—exposing the gendered coercion and institutional convenience that render children especially vulnerable. The conclusion’s rain, purchased by Shula’s death, refuses easy consolation and leaves the viewer implicated in the pleasures of distance and the ethics of looking.