The woman king

A critical reading from a countercolonial perspective

Abstract

The objective of this article is to carry out a critical reading of the work The woman king (2022). Methodologically, to think about the reality of African women in this film, we have based on Afro-centered theories, such as the theory of the Nigerian researcher Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, and decolonial epistemologies. The film tells the story of the agodjié, a female army that maintained unique influence in the African kingdom of Dahomey. The study in focus is a product of the Cine Sankofa, a extension project carried out in 2023 by the Academic League of Ethnic-Racial Relations (LARER – Sankofa), at the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro (UFTM) in Minas Gerais. The critical reading of this film reveals the following results: 1) the role of the African woman represented in the film corresponds to the recovery of the pre-colonial conception of power; 2) the film can assist in the process of recovering African memory by presenting important elements of agency and power of the African people. The historical erasure of the potential of African people, in the colonial process, could only be established with the epistemicide of African ancestral knowledge. In this sense, the film contributes to the Afro-centric perspective, as it offers elements for African people in the diaspora to reposition themselves as subjects of their own history and as agents of power. Finally, the work can be considered an important element of cinema for the subjective decolonization of African people in the diaspora, especially black women.