The Woman King – Women Only Film at The Share Centre

Venue: The Share Centre | 88 Stow Hill, Newport, NP20 4DW
Date: 09/10/2026
Doors: 18:00 Close: 22:00
Entry: Free

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Year: 2022
Running time: 135 minutes
Certificate: 15
Starring: Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim and John Boyega

Content guidance: strong violence, injury detail, sexual violence and racism

Please note: this is a women-only screening.

Who gets to be the hero of a historical epic?

In The Woman King (2022), the answer is a formidable group of Black African women. Set in the West African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1820s, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical action epic is inspired by the Agojie, the all-woman military force that defended the kingdom.

Viola Davis stars as General Nanisca, a fiercely respected leader preparing a new generation of warriors for battle. Among the new recruits is Nawi, played by Thuso Mbedu: young, rebellious and determined to choose a life for herself rather than accept the one others have planned for her. What follows is big-screen cinema in every sense: battles, training, music, movement and spectacle, but also friendship, humour, vulnerability and the relationships that develop between women of different generations. Alongside Davis and Mbedu, Lashana Lynch and Sheila Atim are part of a remarkable female ensemble.

A different kind of historical epic

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood takes a genre traditionally dominated by male heroes and puts Black women decisively at its centre. The film was also made by women in several key creative roles, including cinematographer Polly Morgan and editor Terilyn A. Shropshire. The result is a film interested not only in physical strength, but in mentorship, solidarity, trauma, belonging and the different ways women learn to survive.

There is another fascinating question behind the spectacle: what happens when cinema gives people a heroic image of themselves that mainstream film history has rarely allowed them to see?

History and the stories cinema makes from it

The Woman King is inspired by history. The Agojie really existed, but many of the film's characters and events are fictionalised or rearranged. Dahomey's own involvement in the transatlantic slave trade was also considerably more complex than the film suggests. That tension makes the film especially interesting to discuss. Can a film celebrate an overlooked African history while changing parts of that history? Where does historical storytelling end and myth-making begin? And why have stories such as that of the Agojie taken so long to reach the scale of mainstream cinema?

Women Only Screening

This special women-only screening is an evening for women and young women to watch the film together and enjoy a story filled with female strength, friendship, leadership and resistance. You do not need to be a film expert or know anything about the history beforehand. Come for Viola Davis. Come for the action. Come with friends. Come because you have never seen anything quite like this on a big screen before.

And afterwards, there will be space to talk about what the film leaves us thinking and feeling.

Watch before you come

The Woman King – Official Trailer

The cast on sisterhood and redefining Black women in cinema

Read / explore

The real warriors behind The Woman King – Smithsonian Magazine
A very good accessible introduction to the real Agojie, and importantly it also explains where the film departs from the historical record. 
Read: The Real Warriors Behind The Woman King

BFI – Teaching about race with film: The Woman King
This article looks at how fiction, history, race and representation intersect in the film. 
Explore The Woman King with the BFI

MUBI Notebook – The African Accent and the Colonial Ear
How have Western films taught audiences to expect Africa to “sound”?
Read: The African Accent and the Colonial Ear