For years, the idea was turned down because nobody believed a film led by Black women about African history could sell. In 2022, The Woman King opened at the top of the North American box office. Viola Davis, who led the film and spent months training for it, called it a story Hollywood had told her would never be made.
The Agojie
The film is about the Agojie, the all-female military unit of the kingdom of Dahomey, in what is now the Republic of Benin. European visitors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries wrote about them and often called them “Amazons”. They were real, they were feared and they fought in Dahomey’s wars well into the 1890s, when France conquered the kingdom.
The film
Gina Prince-Bythewood, the director of Love and Basketball and The Old Guard, directed the film from a script by Dana Stevens, based on a story by Maria Bello and Stevens. It is set in 1823. Davis plays Nanisca, a general of the Agojie. John Boyega plays King Ghezo. Thuso Mbedu plays Nawi, a young woman given to the king who becomes a recruit. Lashana Lynch and Sheila Atim play senior warriors.
Training
The cast trained for months with stunt coordinators, lifting weights, running and learning combat. Davis, in her mid-fifties at the time, has said she approached the role like an athlete. The physicality of the performances is one of the film’s main strengths.
Filmed in South Africa
The film was shot mainly in South Africa, with a cast drawn from the United States, Britain and several African countries. Its battle scenes and village sets were built to recreate the world of nineteenth-century Dahomey.
Box office
The film was released in September 2022 and made about $97 million worldwide on a budget reported at around $50 million. For a historical drama with an original story, that was a strong result.
The history argument
The film also drew criticism. Dahomey’s wealth was built in part on capturing and selling people into the Atlantic slave trade. Some critics argued that The Woman King softened that history, presenting Ghezo’s kingdom as heroic and moving the slavery question into the background. The filmmakers said they had addressed the trade and chosen to focus on the women’s story. The debate made the film a talking point well beyond the cinema.
Awards
Davis received BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild nominations for her performance. Many fans were angry when she and Prince-Bythewood were not nominated for Academy Awards, and the omission became part of a wider argument about recognition for Black women in Hollywood.
For West African audiences, the film raised a different question. The story of the Agojie had been told by their enemies for two centuries. The Woman King was the first time millions of people saw them on screen as the heroes of their own story, complicated history included.
