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      Mentors Named for Next Class in Rolex Arts Initiative

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      El Anatsui, Bernardine Evaristo and Dianne Reeves are among those pairing up for the program.The Ghanaian-born visual artist El Anatsui, the British writer Bernardine Evaristo, the Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, the French architect Anne Lacaton and the American jazz singer Dianne Reeves are the new mentors in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, a program started by Rolex in 2002 to foster new generations of outstanding talent.The names of the new mentors and their protégés, who will collaborate for two years, were announced Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where the Arts Initiative is celebrating the culmination of its current program cycle. This cycle included Lin-Manuel Miranda, the first mentor in a recently added open category to incorporate multidisciplinary artists.The protégés are the architect Arine Aprahamian, the writer Ayesha Harruna Attah, the visual artist Bronwyn Katz, the filmmaker Rafael Manuel and the singer and composer Song Yi Jeon. The protégés each receive a stipend of about $41,000 in addition to funds for travel and expenses.The new group of mentors and protégés hail “from nine different countries in Asia, Africa, North America, Europe and the Middle East,” Rebecca Irvin, the head of philanthropy at Rolex, said in an email. “And their artistic work reflects many of the most pressing issues of our day, including sustainability, diversity and social change.”Evaristo, who wrote in a statement that she had her eye on the program “ever since Toni Morrison was a mentor 20 years ago,” said that the “very close and personal attention” that the protégé receives is very different than attending workshops or writing courses. “It might also involve career guidance and personal development, as well as opening up conversations around creativity and society, and looking to other art forms for inspiration,” she said.Twenty years after it began, the Arts Initiative, which calls on influential advisers to select the mentors and protégés, now has a boldface list of alumni, including David Adjaye, Alfonso Cuarón, Brian Eno, Lara Foot, Stephen Frears, Nicholas Hlobo, David Hockney, Joan Jonas, Anish Kapoor, Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Crystal Pite and Tracy K. Smith. More

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      A Filmmaker Explores David Bowie’s Life and Gets Clarity on His Own

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      With the epic “Moonage Daydream,” Brett Morgen contended with a chameleonic star whose approach to living helped him refocus after a heart attack.When the documentary filmmaker Brett Morgen hit his eighth month of writer’s block on an epic project about David Bowie, he decided it was time to hit the road. With just a few hours’ notice, he left his home in Los Angeles one morning and grabbed the first flight to Albuquerque, where Bowie had filmed “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976). When Morgen arrived, he took a cab to the train station and hopped aboard an Amtrak, heading west.“Being in transit was an important theme in David’s life,” he said. “He talked a lot about riding the rails through the West. And a lot of songs that he wrote happened during some of his trips across America.”Morgen pulled out his notes; his phone, packed with all the albums; and his copy of “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. “I was thinking about ‘The Iliad,’” he said, “and I started to see David’s journey. Not all that dissimilar — but he was creating the storms for himself.” Suddenly, the script for his film, already three years in the making, began flowing.That trip was one of the many ways in which Bowie, the protean rock icon who died in 2016, influenced Morgen, an atmospheric documentarian known for showcasing big, world-changing personalities in “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”; “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” about the Hollywood producer Robert Evans (co-directed with Nanette Burstein); and “Jane,” about Jane Goodall.Morgen’s opus about Bowie, “Moonage Daydream,” which opens in theaters and IMAX on Sept. 16, is billed not as a traditional documentary but as an immersive experience. It’s equal parts psychedelic and philosophical — a corkscrew into Bowie’s carefully constructed personae, assembled entirely from archival footage and audio, some of it rare and never broadcast before. The effect is “a hallucinatory jukebox doc with killer subtext,” as one reviewer wrote, appreciatively, after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this spring.Though there have been other documentaries, and many books, this is the first project that had the full cooperation of Bowie’s estate, and total entrée to his voluminous archives. The songs have been stripped and rejuvenated for the soundtrack, and any narration there is comes from Bowie himself.“It was never designed to be a film about David Jones,” Morgen said, referring to the star’s given name, and added, “It’s a film about Bowie in quotations.”NeonBut that level of intimacy proved its own challenge as Morgen, the writer, director and producer, grappled with a mountain of material and wound up the sole editor after the production ran out of money. “I felt very confident that the through line of David’s artistic life was chaos and fragmentation,” Morgen said. He had heard those ideas come up again and again in Bowie’s interviews from 1971 on, and eventually decided to embrace them himself. Tony Visconti, Bowie’s longtime collaborator and producer, who served as a resource for the audio, came away impressed with the way the film kaleidoscoped the visuals, narration and music. “There is technical wizardry in all that,” he wrote in an email. “And when seen and heard, especially in an IMAX theater, you will get the most Bowie ever — sensory overload.”“David would be very impressed with this film,” he added.What Morgen didn’t realize was how much making the film would change him, especially after he had a debilitating heart attack, at 47. He flatlined and was in a coma for a week, he said in a phone interview. He emerged with a mind-set that shaped his approach to the story and refocused his own life, as a married father of three. Perversely, the driven Bowie helped Morgen, now 53, a fellow workaholic, find equilibrium.And he needed it, when he was editing, entirely solo, during the first peak of Covid (his health scare made him extra-cautious). “I was sitting alone in this building, making a film about an artist whose stock in trade is isolation, and how to channel it creatively,” he said. “So I felt that he was consistently describing the world that I was inhabiting.”Early on, he had visited Visconti in his New York studio. “We were in the room where he recorded David doing ‘Blackstar,’” the album Bowie released two days before his death, Morgen said. “It was quite intense.” Visconti played him “Cygnet Committee,” a prog-y folk-rock track off Bowie’s second album, stripping out vocals. The song, written when Bowie was around 22, ends with a repeated lyric: “I want to live.”“David was crying throughout the performance,” Morgen said.That sort of emotion — ravenous and vulnerable — set the tone for the film. “Moonage Daydream” was five years in the making. It took Morgen and his team over a year just to transfer hours of concert and performance footage, images of Bowie’s paintings and other content from the Bowie estate, along with additional footage acquired by Morgen’s archivist, and about two years to watch it all.But the movie is hardly completist. There are no interviews with anyone else, and no mention of, for example, Iggy Pop, whom Bowie holed up with in Berlin during one of his most creatively fertile periods, or Nile Rodgers, who helped him reinvent his career as a pop artist in the ’80s. The sexual voraciousness and drug addiction that usually feature heavily in Bowie’s story are referenced only with montages and jumpy interview clips. (“Do I need to spell it out? It seems kind of blatant to me,” Morgen said of one where Bowie appears sweating and grinning maniacally.) Though the movie dips into his childhood and family, it glosses over his personal life until his marriage to Iman, the model and entrepreneur.“It was never designed to be a film about David Jones,” Morgen said, using Bowie’s given name. Every time Bowie was onscreen, including interviews, was a performative moment, Morgen added, and that’s what he wanted to capture. “It’s a film about Bowie in quotations.”“Moonage Daydream” is more an immersive experience than a traditional documentary.NeonHe had first pitched Bowie directly on making a hybrid nonfiction film in 2007, when the artist was already wondering how to showcase his archives, but the timing and scope wasn’t right, Morgen said. He was exploring a similar nonfiction idea with the remaining Beatles when Bowie died, and a call with Bowie’s longtime business manager, Bill Zysblat, resurrected the film.Bowie’s estate gave him unfettered access but not much guidance, Morgen said. At one point, he wanted to discuss what direction to take. “Should we go more toward ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’” the 2018 Queen biopic, “and create a kind of populist singalong?” he asked. “Or should we do it more in the spirit of Bowie, which may be a little more adventurous?” And they said, “Well, that’s your problem.” (He employed Paul Massey, who shared an Oscar for sound mixing on “Bohemian Rhapsody” — which Morgen said he watched 14 or 15 times — for “Moonage Daydream.”)The estate, which is overseen by Zysblat, and includes Bowie’s family — his widow, Iman; their daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones; and his son from his first marriage, the filmmaker Duncan Jones — declined to answer any questions, but they support the film. “Brett Morgen has created a stunning testament to David’s lasting influence on the world,” they said in a statement delivered through a representative. The estate has continued to earn money, selling Bowie’s songwriting catalog to Warner Music for an estimated $250 million this year, as his popularity (more than 1 billion streams on Spotify) and reputation as a cultural visionary — especially when it comes to technology and music — has only grown.For Morgen, one of the most illustrative points was the way Bowie behaved in many interviews, often with people who clearly did not get him; one, trying to suss out just how alien this gender-bending artist was, asked if he’d had a teddy bear as a child. And yet, “I never saw David talk down, be disrespectful, short, annoyed,” Morgen said.Maybe this was just politesse as a disarming tactic, but Morgen saw it as something deeper — an ability to seek connection and profundity in any situation. It was a message that he tried to convey in the film. Bowie was “trying to make each moment matter,” he said. “It’s a life-affirming sort of road map, on how to lead a satisfying and complete life.” More

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      ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’: What to Know Before Watching

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      After 13 years, James Cameron’s sequel, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” is finally opening in December. Here’s everything you need to know.What can be accomplished in 13 years? Given that much time, J.K. Rowling published all seven of the Harry Potter books — and helped turn the first six of them into movies. Taylor Swift cranked out eight studio albums — and rerecorded two of them. The Yankees won the World Series eight times.James Cameron made one film.“Avatar: The Way of Water,” a roughly three-hour sci-fi epic, is a sequel to his 2009 “Avatar,” which shattered box office records and garnered a devoted fan base. (The three Academy Awards — for art direction, cinematography and visual effects — didn’t hurt either.) It’s set for a holiday-season release on Dec. 16 in theaters.If you remember very little about Pandora, here’s a refresher on the “Avatar” plot, the phenomenon it became and the stakes a sequel faces.OK, I just need to make sure before I get my hopes up yet again: This is really, finally, actually happening?Yes.Why did it take so long?The short answer is that the dazzling — and costly — array of visual effects means these films spend forever and a day in preproduction. Also, a majority of the sequel was filmed underwater, and new motion-capture technology had to be developed to accomplish the feat.Thirteen years is a long time, but not long enough for me to have seen the original “Avatar.” Can I watch “The Way of Water” anyway?Well, yes, but it’d be like diving into the “Star Wars” franchise with “The Empire Strikes Back.” How did Han Solo get in that carbonite? And what’s the deal with him and Princess Leia?OK, got it, not optional. So where can I watch “Avatar”?You’ll no longer be able to find it on Disney+ after it was quietly removed from the streaming service in August. You can, however, see “Avatar” in theaters beginning Sept. 23, when Disney will rerelease it with remastered audio and picture.Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña in a scene from the original.20th Century FoxI don’t have time to rewatch a nearly three-hour film! Hit me with the highlights.It’s the middle of the 22nd century and humans have depleted Earth’s natural resources, so they are now colonizing a moon known as Pandora, which is home to both the valuable mineral unobtanium and a tribe of 10-foot-tall indigenous blue creatures known as Na’vi, who look like a mash-up of the Blue Man Group, centaurs, professional basketball players and armed supermodels. A group of specially trained humans inhabit genetically engineered Na’vi bodies, known as avatars, to interact with the tribe while their human bodies remain in a remote location.The protagonist is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-Marine who replaces his identical twin brother in the Avatar Program after his death. Power struggles ensue within the program about what is worth sacrificing to obtain the unobtanium, as well as the value of Na’vi life; within the forest, as Jake tries to convince the Na’vi to accept him as one of their own; and within Jake himself. He grapples with the ethics of what he is doing, which is complicated by the fact that he has fallen for one of the Na’vi women, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).After Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the head of the security force for the group mining the unobtanium, destroys the Na’vi’s gathering place, Hometree, and kills many of them, Jake confronts him in his Na’vi form. Quaritch almost kills Jake before Neytiri fatally shoots the colonel with two arrows to the chest. Jake, in love with Neytiri and having gained the trust of the Na’vi, chooses to transfer to his avatar form permanently. The film’s closing shot is of his eyes, waking up on Pandora.The visual effects in the film were a big deal, right?Oh, yes. Reviewers focused as much — if not more — on the images as on the plot, both explaining and lauding the use of performance capture, which was then a newfangled innovation that had been most notably used for Gollum in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films.Wasn’t “Avatar” released in 3-D?Yes, it was shot with a 3-D camera system that gave Cameron an augmented-reality view in real time by integrating the live actors with computer-generated environments in the viewfinder. “Avatar” was one of the films that restarted a fad of 3-D cinematic releases, though you may not have actually seen it in 3-D: Many theaters didn’t yet have 3-D projection systems.What about the film itself? Was it any good?It brought in more than $2.8 billion at the worldwide box office, becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time, not adjusted for inflation. Reviewing the film for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis named it a Critic’s Pick, calling it “glorious and goofy and blissfully deranged.”Both critics and audiences lauded the visuals and immersive world-building, but the story itself — which was familiar to anyone who had seen “Dances With Wolves” or “The Last Samurai” — won far less acclaim, with a large portion of reviewers dismissing it as generic or unoriginal. In her review, Dargis also criticized Cameron’s writing, particularly the dialogue, which she noted veered into “comically broad” territory at times (case in point: “Yeah, who’s bad?” Jake taunts a rhinolike creature).Jake Sully (Worthington) is back for the sequel, in which he’s now a father. 20th Century StudiosIs Cameron writing the sequel, too?Yes, though while he had sole script credit on “Avatar,” he co-wrote “The Way of Water” with Josh Friedman, who wrote the 2005 “War of the Worlds” adaptation that was directed by Steven Spielberg, and is co-writing the forthcoming “Star Trek 4” film.What do we know about “The Way of Water” so far?Cameron, who won an Academy Award for directing “Titanic,” is going back to the sea with the sequel, which is — as you may have guessed from the title — set primarily underwater. It takes place more than a decade after the events of the first film and focuses on Jake Sully and Neytiri and their preteen children. It also introduces a new tribe of reef-dwelling Na’vi known as the Metkayina.Is Zoe Saldaña back?Saldaña, who became a fan favorite for her performance as Neytiri and went on to play the green-skinned Gamora in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, is back for “The Way of Water,” along with Worthington, Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Joel David Moore and CCH Pounder. Yes, some of their characters are apparently dead, and no, we haven’t figured out how that works yet.They’ll be joined by prominent newcomers, including Kate Winslet (the Na’vi leader Ronal), Cliff Curtis (Tonowari, a leader of the Metkayina clan), Edie Falco (a military officer) and Jemaine Clement (a marine biologist).Will the sequel be shown in 3-D?Yes, but good news for glasses-wearers: You won’t need two sets to take in the film; a newer laser system eliminates the need for special glasses. (Though many theaters, as was the case the first time around, do not yet have the necessary equipment.)Am I going to have to wait 13 more years for “Avatar 3”?Cameron has signed on to make three more sequels, and they’re currently set for release in 2024, 2026 and 2028.But maybe pencil in 2035, 2048 and 2061, just in case. More

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      Olivia Colman and Claire Foy on Playing Queen Elizabeth II on ‘The Crown’

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      Queen Elizabeth II was for most people unknowable, but there was one place where the curious could feel close to her: onscreen.And whether it was Helen Mirren in “The Queen,” a movie about the monarch’s life in the days after Princess Diana’s death, or Claire Foy and Olivia Colman in Netflix’s “The Crown,” the actors all took different approaches to try to get under the skin of such an enigmatic figure.Ms. Mirren told The New York Times in 2006 that she had not just relied on a gray wig and upper-crust accent but also had steeped herself in every aspect of Elizabeth’s life, reading biographies and watching old film clips to try to get a sense of the monarch’s character and even mannerisms, both on and off duty.Ms. Foy, who portrayed the young queen as she ascended the throne in the first two series of “The Crown,” said that she hadn’t been able to do much research because there were no accounts of what the monarch had really thought in those moments.“I just had to imagine what it was like, being a girl who wanted to live in the countryside with her husband and children and dogs and horses,” Ms. Foy said at a 2016 media event, according to the magazine Variety. “She was a shy, retiring type, very close to her lovely sister, and suddenly she’s given the top job, and she’s the most unlikely person to have it.”Ms. Foy portrayed the queen as distant from her children, but she said that Elizabeth shouldn’t be criticized for that. “She had a job to do, and if she was a man, no one would have questioned it,” the actress said in an interview in The Guardian in 2017.Ms. Colman seems to be the actor most affected by playing the monarch. “I’ve fallen in love with the queen,” she said in a 2019 interview with The Radio Times, a British magazine.Elizabeth was “the ultimate feminist,” she added, noting that the monarch was the family’s breadwinner at a time when few women were in Britain, and that in 1998, the queen drove King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia around her Balmoral estate in Scotland at a time when women were barred from driving in his country.“She’s extraordinary,” Ms. Colman said. “She’s changed my views on everything.” More

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      ‘About Fate’ Review: Love the One You’re With?

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      Thomas Mann’s beguiling performance drives this Emma Roberts vehicle, but the romantic comedy creaks under the weight of its coincidences.A few coincidences can have their charms, but the romantic comedy “About Fate,” directed by Marius Vaysberg and written by Tiffany Paulsen (“Holidate”), creaks under the weight of a pile of improbabilities.Margot (Emma Roberts), a real estate agent, and Griffin (Thomas Mann), a public defender, each greet the day before New Year’s Eve with heightened hopes for their dates with their significant others that night. Their split-screen hopes about a wedding proposal lead us to believe that they are each other’s person. Those who have seen the trailer know better.At dinner, Margot is dumped by her boyfriend, Kip (the martial artist and action star Lewis Tan). The next day they are expected at the wedding of Margot’s judgy sister (a spiky Britt Robertson). Things go only slightly better for Griffin. Sitting nearby at the chain restaurant in Boston where his father and grandfather successfully popped the question, he proposes to his girlfriend, Clementine (a social media maven and model played by Madelaine Petsch). Excited, she cuts him off and insists Griffin do it again at their New Year’s Eve party so she can share the moment with her online following.Fate, or something like it, finds the nice guy accompanying the emotionally messy blonde gal to her sister’s nuptials, pretending to be Kip. Misunderstandings, mayhem and the tug of a deeper affection ensue. It would all be pretty boilerplate, but Mann’s anchoring appeal — his lean into Griffin’s modesty and decency — saves the movie from a sorrier fate.About FateRated R for some randy language and a toss-off line about a sex act. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘End of the Road’ Review: Thrill Ride

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      Queen Latifah and Chris Bridges anchor a predictable thriller that also manages to spin a charming tale of family unity.A family of four traverses an obstacle course of Wild West crime escapades in the charming caper “End of the Road.” Queen Latifah and Chris Bridges anchor the antics as Brenda, a mother of two teenagers, and Reggie, Brenda’s layabout younger brother. Their sibling alliance forms the heart of the movie, and the pair toggle credibly between a combative dynamic and a considerate one.When the movie begins, Brenda has resolved to move the brood from California to Texas following the death of her husband. Her children (Mychala Faith Lee and Shaun Dixon) are bitter about being uprooted from their home. The story takes place during their road trip across the Southwest, but what begins as a quiet journey through the desert spirals into a violent chase after the family become earwitnesses to a grisly motel murder.Despite its thriller structure, this crime story offers little surprise or intrigue. With a brief running time, the movie unspools simply: each beat is predictable, and even the identity of the unseen felon is a mystery easily solved.But this plainness of plot — and a sparsity of the action set pieces that often clog up such movies — ultimately proves a boon to “End of the Road,” leaving space for the director, Millicent Shelton, to nurture a comforting tale of family unity. Shelton also demonstrates a creative eye; check out her use of purple lighting during certain night scenes. Even when the movie wants for tension, it brims with playful style.End of the RoadRated R for drugs and danger. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Dos Estaciones’ Review: A Tequila Factory’s Story, Sip by Sip

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      A woman tries to keep her family business running in this film that employs dreamlike rhythms and documentary-style realism.There is a startling moment in the soulful Mexican drama “Dos Estaciones” when it shifts from the protagonist to a secondary character. Movies often take detours, yet when they pop into a supporting player’s life or nose around the story’s periphery, it’s usually to expand on the main event. Here, though, the diversion is so imbued by the secondary character’s being, so organic and leisurely, that it feels like the beginning of another movie entirely.I’ve thought a lot about this detour the two times that I’ve watched “Dos Estaciones.” The story centers on María (Teresa Sánchez), who owns a failing tequila factory in Jalisco, Mexico. It takes a while to get a handle on her. She’s stolid, stoic and somewhat ambiguous — from a distance, she could pass for a man — and the writer-director Juan Pablo González doesn’t proffer chunks of explanation. You have to piece María together from where her gaze lands, how she walks, holds her head and stands next to others. You also have to listen to what she says and to the heaviness of her silences.The story tracks María through her day-to-day at the factory, which once belonged to her father. It’s a bright, spacious facility filled with gleaming modern equipment but no longer has enough workers to make it buzz. The reasons for its decline emerge piecemeal throughout the movie in worried references to a disease that’s affecting the agave, in the stack of unpaid bills in María’s office and, crucially, in references to foreign competitors who are threatening her patrimony. When she curses about “gringos” under her breath, it feels personal: González’s family runs the factory used in the movie.Things happen, quietly, and with scrupulous precision, and María’s life slowly fills in. Her truck doesn’t start; she samples tequila; confers with her employees. She’s habitually by herself, or almost — oftentimes some workers bustle nearby. At one point, she goes to a small party where she meets a friendly young woman, Rafaela (Rafaela Fuentes, one of several nonprofessional actors in the cast). Rafaela once worked in another tequila factory and is now looking for work. As the women chat, sliding into a natural, sympathetic vibe, María furtively looks at Rafaela and then offers her a job.As is true throughout the movie, nothing goes as expected. González has made a handful of documentaries, mostly shorts; I imagine that he’s watched his share of art films. The rhythms in “Dos Estaciones” are somewhat slower than those in contemporary industrial cinema, but the movie never drags, and González doesn’t indulge in excessive longueurs or pointless ambiguities. His most notable strategy (aesthetic and political) is to soften the line between fiction and nonfiction, incorporating documentary-style passages into the fiction that enrich its sense of place and of a people — its realism.The first scene is exemplary in this respect. It opens in a field of mature blue agave plants under a vivid blue sky where a man is using a shovel to shave off the large spiky leaves, exposing the heart of the plant, called the piña (Spanish for pineapple). It’s a mesmerizing interlude, partly because the man’s gestures are so exacting and relatively unfamiliar but also because the light and high-contrast colors are beautiful. If this were a different movie, say, a straight documentary, you might expect some exegesis to come next — cue the voice-over — but the scene has the quality of a dream, and it’s inviting.In time, the piñas are tossed into baskets carried by mules, loaded onto trucks and driven to the factory. There, they’re baked in enormous ovens and subsequently fermented, distilled and cask-aged under María’s direction. It can take up to 20 years to make tequila, an artisanal process that González reveals incrementally over the course of the movie. If he gives it so much attention, it’s partly because the manufacturing, in its quotidian textures and difficult work, offers a window onto María herself. With its modest means, painstaking labor and aggressive, industrial competition, it also mirrors this kind of independent artistic cinema.At once specific and expansive, “Dos Estaciones” can be described several ways: as a drama, a character study, a meditative exploration of the ravages of globalization. At the same time, part of the movie’s pleasure is how it avoids facile categorization, like when it takes that detour I mentioned earlier to follow María’s hairdresser, a trans woman, Tatín (Tatín Vera), as she goes out on the town, enjoys a one-night stand, talks about art and later goes shopping. As Tatín shops, she hails townspeople, and you grasp that these streets and this scene — along with the agave, the blazing sun and the rich red earth — describe, better than any genre label could, María, her world and this striking movie.Dos EstacionesNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Woman King’ and Intimate Moments Amid Epic Action

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      From her debut feature, the rom-com classic “Love and Basketball,” to her most recent action hit, “The Old Guard,” Gina Prince-Bythewood is known for films with rich character introspection amid outward chaos. That touch is evident again this fall even as she widens her cinematic playing field with the fact-based battle epic “The Woman King.”The period film follows a troop of fierce woman warriors, the Agojie, as they defend the West African kingdom of Dahomey from slave traders, domestic and foreign. Led by Viola Davis as General Nanisca, the women live in their own corner of the palace of King Ghezo (John Boyega) in a man-free enclave as they hone their combat skills. Into this environment, Nawi (newcomer Thuso Mbedu), a young girl unceremoniously dumped at the palace, begins training alongside more experienced soldiers played by Lashana Lynch and Sheila Atim.Davis brought the concept to Prince-Bythewood. “When we first met with her, she wept in the room,” Davis said of Prince-Bythewood. “When a director has that level of passion and vulnerability for the work, they’re going to treat it as their child. I understood that this was Gina’s magnum opus in the room.”In a video interview, Prince-Bythewood explained how she went about tackling what would be, logistically, her biggest film yet. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Tell me about how the scale of this movie was different from things you’ve done before.When I met with Viola and Cathy [Schulman, a producer] to get the job, I said to them, I felt all my work until this point led me to be able to tell this story the right way and give it the epic scale it deserved, to do the action the right way, to showcase these women in the way they deserve to be showcased, given all the things I’ve learned, not only on “The Old Guard” with action but just in storytelling. Do you care about the characters? Do they feel real to you? That’s where every really good movie starts.Viola Davis as a general leading the Agojie into battle. The actress brought the material to the director, who wept when they first met to discuss it.Ilze Kitshoff/Sony PicturesHow did this production come to you?About five years ago, I read that Viola Davis was going to do a film about female warriors, and I said to myself, “Why didn’t they come to me for that?” [Laughs] But then they did; they had come to me as a writer-director, but the script had to be written. I think I was on “Silver & Black” [a superhero project that was ultimately canceled], so I couldn’t take on the writing, but I said, “Please come back to me when you have a script.” You say that a lot, but I really did mean it.And then they came back to me with the script [credited to Dana Stevens from a story by Stevens and Maria Bello]. At that point, “Black Panther” had come out, and I remember reading that the Dora Milaje in “Black Panther” were based on real-life warrior women. People were calling them Black Amazons, and they actually had a real name, which was Agojie — that’s when I first heard about them. As soon as I read the script, I knew in five pages that I had to do this movie. It was just excitement, excitement, excitement, because the story was entrenched in truth and a specific war that happened at a specific time, then led to a bigger war against colonizers. The more I learned about them, the more I got excited about putting this incredible culture — and us — onscreen in a way that we haven’t been able to see ourselves.I’m glad you mentioned the Dora Milaje before I did, because you’re definitely going to hear comparisons to them. How do you take that?I loved “Black Panther.” Loved it. You know, for me, “The Woman King” is where we started, and “Black Panther” is where we can go, so past and future — I think it’s a beautiful connection. I think it’s cool that people can now learn that this doesn’t have to be a fantasy, that we really were these women, we have this innate warrior within us.Based on “The Secret Life of Bees” and “Love and Basketball,” you like introspective character moments, especially with women. How did you achieve such moments within the scale and spectacle of “The Woman King”?I feel like the intimate moments were as important as the big set pieces. Set pieces and action do not matter if you don’t care about the characters. So I love to take the time to allow an audience to understand who people are, where they come from, their relationships with others. The sisterhood of this film was so important, the humanity of these women was so important: I wanted to take the time to establish that so when you see Viola fighting in the Oyo battle, you care. You’ve got to invest that time. I love doing action, but I love doing two people in a scene. [Lynch’s character] Izogie braiding [Nawi’s] hair and talking to her about, “You’re more powerful than you even know” — I get off doing that scene equally as I do doing a big battle scene.Do you find that action surrounding such internal scenes can threaten to overpower them?Great action magnifies who a character is. You can tell so much story within an action scene. But you’ve got to know who Izogie is from the outset and the way she fights. That was fun to create: What is your fighting style, and what does that say about your character? To be able to do that with the actors, that’s all the fun stuff.From left, Thusu Mbedu, Davis and Sheila Atim, who told the director she wished her 12-year-old self could have seen this film.Sony PicturesWhere did you film, and what were some of the challenges of being on location?We shot in South Africa, the majority in Cape Town. We built our entire palace there. But the first two weeks of filming was in KwaZulu-Natal, where we shot a lot of the deep jungle stuff. That was incredible to be in that environment; that’s also where Thuso is from, so the fact that her first movie she got to shoot where she was born and raised was amazing for her.When we got back to Cape Town, Omicron hit us, and that was really tough because we had to shut down for a couple weeks. Scariest thing, we were three weeks into shooting. I didn’t know if we were going to come back. Was Omicron going to keep doing this, or was it going to plateau?Was your fear that you’d have to scrap the film altogether, or just delay it?I thought we were going to have to scrap it.Sticking with South Africa, let’s talk about Thuso. You said this was her first film. What did she bring to the film that you had to have?She auditioned. The moment her face appeared on Zoom, I just cared about her before she even opened her mouth! And then she opened her mouth, and I cared about her even more. She just has this thing, this innate vulnerability, but also she’s a generational talent. She’s so good.She can go toe-to-toe with Viola Davis! Like, who can do that? She did that. Thuso’s so smart about character, she pays attention to everything — detail is so important to her. She’s so passionate and so good. I loved just watching her in scenes.Let’s talk about the fight scenes. The actors did some of their own fighting and stunts in a battle-heavy movie.To each one of them, including Viola, I had to look [them] in the eye and [say], “You’re going to do your own fighting and stunts. Are you willing to do everything you have to to embody these characters?” And everyone said yes. But it’s one thing to say yes, it’s another to really do it, and I’m talking months of work. You have to have an incredible mind-set to do that. The beauty of it is that type of training is part of the rehearsal process. It helps you build character, it helps bond them. But they have such great pride now when they get to see what they did. I mean, that’s really them fighting.It amazes me that there’s this narrative that women aren’t warriors, aren’t tough. These women put themselves through so much to be able to do what they did on set, and in an action film, you should never get injured, but you will get hurt at some point — a stray punch or you land wrong — and all of these women got hurt and would not stop. I love it, because I’m an athlete, and to see that from them was really beautiful.Another thing I think that’s going to be immediately appreciated and a fact that kept coming into my head is: Little girls are going to see all these natural hairstyles, and that is huge.Sheila is the one that said she wishes her 12-year-old self had this film. And, yeah, that’s the thing we’re most excited about: How can this change the way that we see ourselves, especially little girls? Do you get to now grow up and see yourself heroically, and can you take that in for yourself? I’m really hoping that for this film. More