The power of the king woman

I celebrate you, my sisters. Thus, in a celebration ritual – with the right to praise Breonna Taylor (a young black American girl shot dead by police officers in 2020 in the USA) – ends the film A Mulher Rei, a new film by Viola Davis that officially opens in Brazil next Thursday ( 22).

It is precisely with this spoiler alert (small, don’t worry) at the end of the movie that I want to start this text.

Celebrate our own stories before they die if not told by us. Black people. That’s how Viola Davis defined it in the interview to launch the film on the night of the premiere this Monday at the Copacabana Palace theater.

The film The King Woman tells a true story, hitherto lost in time, about the Agojie. African warriors who lived in the kingdom of Dahomey in the 19th century and formed the army of women who served, defended and protected the kingdom and its king. His physical strength and fighting skills were something the world had never seen. Actress Viola Davis plays General Nanisca, who leads this female army and is the protagonist of the film.

Protagonism is the main motto of this story, behind the scenes and the message that the film wants to convey. Black protagonism of having represented in a film not only a history of the black people but also of having a black actress and many black actors leading this story. Black protagonism that reveals the real history and power of black women who in the kingdom of Daome already had gender parity and reached high positions and ranks. Protagonism of having dark-skinned women like Viola, like me recognizing myself on the movie screen. And celebrating each other.

Pause: my eyes did not stop watering when I saw Viola Davis beautiful in her exuberance and blackness before my eyes on her opening night in Rio de Janeiro. My inner child could only scream, “she looks like me”, just like the little black girls enchanted by Disney’s black Ariel.

Here, my dear ones, is the power of representation. “This is powerful. Unbelievable. Black women were seen until then as secondary ”, pointed out Viola Davis at the press conference she gave in Rio de Janeiro. The power of being seen, seen as human, of being ourselves and of believing that we can own our own stories. This is Agojie.

Just like a good action movie, The King Woman deals with a lot of pain, wounds and struggles – physical and emotional. Fights so contemporary that it is difficult not to identify with one of them. Sexual abuse, abandonment, loneliness of black women, colorism, invisibility, racism…
Fights that Viola Davis highlights well that follow on and off the set to make everything work out.

“It’s the journey of my life” as Davis defined it when justifying why he chose this story. “It talks about the complexity of being a black woman. But I could be myself. You see me in the movie,” she adds.

I risk plagiarizing the phrase and saying that it is the journey of our lives. Black women in the incessant search to tell our own stories and be protagonists of them.