Stars below instead of above! I wanted to see them straight away. I prayed for a miracle, for the sun to set. - Tsitsi Dangarembga

Keening. I remember keening that seemed to go on all through the night: shrill, sharp, shiny, needless of sound piercing cleanly and deeply to let the anguish in, not out.

The skills I had learned for prose didn’t work in film. Those telling details, they’re completely different. Or the fact of these inner monologues in which you can write a whole book. Whereas prose is teasing out, film is stripping down, concentrating and compacting. I found I could not learn the one while doing the other. So it was a big struggle, actually. It took me years.

You begin to suspect that Cousin-Brother-in-Law and Nyasha are not being honest, that they found each other because neither possesses the hardiness success requires, so they have dressed discouragement up in the glamour of intellect.