All reports are that ‘The Woman King’ reigns supreme at the Toronto International Film Festival, which opened on September 8 and closes on Sunday, September 18.

Gina Prince-Bythewood directed the historical epic set in West Africa in 1823. Tony and Oscar award winner Viola Davis, featured here in four covers of the October 2022 issue of ELLE Brazil, stars as Nanisca, a force of nature in Dahomey, West Africa. Today Dahomey is located in what we know as southern Benin.

As the leader of the Agojie, the all-woman army of the African kingdom, Davis’s character led a fighting force so fierce that even enemies spoke of its “prodigious bravery”.