BlackStar Film Festival 2026 : Naishe Nyamubaya’s “God Sleeps on Sundays” Centers Religious Conflict

Christianity, during the 1st AD, smuggled itself into the African continent. Initially, it took root in Egypt and Ethiopia through figures like Mark the Evangelist, who established the continent as a foundational hub for early theological thought, monasticism, and long-standing independent institutions like the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. However, during the late 15th to 20th centuries, when European exploration, the transatlantic slave trade, and the scramble for Africa happened, Christianity expanded on the continent. European missionaries deployed a dual strategy of evangelism and civilization, building vast networks of schools and clinics that introduced Western literacy, medicine, and social structures. This expansion fractured the African psyche, creating a complex duality where traditional indigenous worldviews were systematically demonized as pagan while Western culture was elevated as the sole path to salvation. There exists a long list of African literature and films that centers this tension. This tension is what Naishe Nyamubaya’s God Sleeps on Sundays which is screening at the 2026 BlackStar Film Festival contends with. 

Per the film’s synopsis, the film follows James (Leroy Siyafa), a disgraced preacher exiled after a city scandal, assigned to build a new church in a distant rural community. Accompanied by his wife Mavis (Tendaiishe Chitima), James views this as a second coming. But, the state-bought land, is occupied by Chirongoma (Wizzy Mangoma), a revered traditional healer. There’s an understanding that she owns the land and can’t be dispossessed. But, James won’t bulge. The seven-day film situated in a single location follows their battle. From Monday to Sunday, James, representative of colonial legacy and foreign religion and Chirongoma, delegate of indigenous African tradition, contested ownership of the land. 

Zimbabwe’s history with Christianity has been linked to the brief 16th-century Portuguese Catholic mission, notably led by Father Gonçalo da Silveira in 1560. After that encounter, in 1859, Robert Moffat of the London Missionary Society established a station at Inyati even though it was heavily restricted by Ndebele rulers like King Lobengula. In 1890, the British South Africa Company’s Pioneer Column invaded the territory, dismantling indigenous kingdoms and granting mainline churches over 325,000 acres of land to systematically introduce Euro-centric education and religion. It’s on this generational history and conflict that James and Chirongoma’s conflict rest on. James, armed with a state-approved document, claims the land. Chirongoma, courtesy of inheriting the land from her ancestors, claims the land. Who then, the film subtly asks, owns the land? Is it the government that grants James the land or the ancestors that gave Chirongoma as an ancestral gift? 

This central conflict and question highlights how colonial dispossession is a military conquest and structural rewriting of legality that continues to fracture modern African societies. When Zimbabwe was partitioned to missionary churches, it rewrote communal ownership, ancestral legacy, and replaced indigenous frameworks with a rigid, Euro-centric system of private property deeds. James, in relying on a state-approved document, represents the enduring power of this bureaucratic colonial inheritance, where the post-colonial state often ends up enforcing the very legal frameworks once used to strip Africans of their sovereignty. Conversely, Chirongoma’s claim exposes the deep-seated spiritual and historical reality that a piece of paper cannot erase centuries of ancestral continuity. By juxtaposing the two, the film masterfully illustrates that the tragedy of the land question is not just a dispute between two individuals, but a fundamental collision between two incompatible worldviews: one that treats land as a transactional commodity backed by state violence, and another that views it as sacred, transferable living link to the past.

Away from this, there’s Mavis, James’ wife, who embodies the uncertainty between choosing between Christainiy and traditional religion. They have been struggling to conceive for years. Chirongoma’s understanding of nature and herbs holds possible solutions to their years-long issue. But, Mavis is unable to decide on which identity to choose. This systematic dual identity leads to cultural alienation and a dual spiritual consciousness, wherein many modern Zimbabweans openly profess Christian doctrines while privately relying on traditional spiritual coping mechanisms during existential crises. The split identity and the painful tension between cherrypicking between ancestral heritage and their adopted faith often resulting in cultural alienation and an internalized sense of civilizational inferiority. 

God Sleeps on Sundays carries its theme through its characters. Characters and settings carry dual meanings. But, the story suffers from noticeable narrative logical gaps that could have been solved through writing and dialogue. This isn’t an attempt to gaslight the filmmaker into providing a rope or thread of information. It’s that by not gesturing towards a hint, it hinders narrative coherence. But, there’s another stronger argument that sits on the transactional relationship between filmmakers and their audiences. In Nyamubaya’s God Sleeps on Sundays, the director sees the audience as a consumer of meaning and him, the writer and director, as a producer of said meaning. Nyamubaya, through the sparse dialogue, established setting and characters carry information that audiences can infer, believes the audiences can infer meaning. By watching James’ erratic attitudes and violence-inclined activities, the writing suggests, to the audiences, who James is beyond what he thematically and metaphorically represents. And when Chirongoma chooses silence and diplomacy in her relation with James, it also carries meaning that can be inferred. This is the beauty in Nyamubaya’s God Sleeps on Sundays.