The Woman King

Gina Prince-Bythewood opens in the Kingdom of Dahomey in 1823, where General Nanisca drills a new recruit, Nawi, into the all female Agojie regiment. The research shaped the film. Viola Davis says there is only one substantial English language book on the Agojie, and that she read it crossing out the colonial asides about how the women looked. Akin McKenzie, the production designer, had to separate real surviving photographs from ones staged later for a world fair. The cast spent months before the shoot on weights, sprints, martial arts and machete work. Filming ran in South Africa, where the omicron wave shut production down for weeks and a battle sequence with hundreds of performers had to be rehearsed again. Nanisca snatching the machete out of Nawi’s hand was unscripted, and it stayed in. The history is loose by choice. Ouidah, the slave port Dahomey had held since 1727, is shown here under Oyo control, and Nanisca’s opposition to the trade is invented. A boycott campaign met the release; Davis answered that most of the story is fictionalised. A good fit if you want the fighting built out of what the performers can physically do, and will read Dahomey’s part in the slave trade elsewhere. Not for anyone who needs the events on screen to be documented history.