BATTLE ROYAL

Gina Prince-Bythewood follows up The Old Guard by assembling some of the world’s greatest Black actresses, led by Viola Davis and Lashana Lynch, as the mighty 19thcentury African army, the Agojie. Total Film talks to the director and stars of The Woman King about creating a new kind of historical action epic.

- LEILA LATIF

Gina Prince-Bythewood is a stickler for details, stopping her interview with Total Film to grab a book in order to accurately relay a quote from Ghanaian revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah that spoke to her experience. She’s found it: “I am not African because I was born in Africa, but because Africa was born in me.”

Prince-Bythewood may be from California, but both her identity and her latest film are firmly rooted in the African continent. The Woman King is set in 19th-century Benin and follows General Nanisca (Viola Davis), leader of an elite all-female unit of warriors – the Agojie – who protect the Kingdom of Dahomey. In telling a story that so distinctly belongs to an African group of women, Prince-Bythewood immediately knew the production had to travel across the Atlantic. “I didn’t want this to be a greenscreen film,” she says. “But it wasn’t just for the aesthetics – we wanted our feet and hands in the soil to tell the stories. This is an epic film with big crowds, and I wanted it to be us.”