They are the only documented all-female army in modern history.
This is the story of Agojie, the elite army at the heart of the movie, "The Woman King".
This is the story of Agojie, the elite army at the heart of the movie, "The Woman King".
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Short filmTranscript
00:00The Agoge were the unruly ones.
00:02They were considered unattractive.
00:05They were told to stifle their pain.
00:07They basically trained from sunup to sundown.
00:21You are called to join the king's garden.
00:24No kingdom in all of Africa shares this privilege.
00:29It was also a very unique thing around the world.
00:31There are examples of other all-female armies.
00:34If you look through history,
00:35it's not just something that's rare to the continent.
00:57They were also there for each other.
00:59They lived and died for each other.
01:00It was this incredible sisterhood.
01:03A lot of these women were from different neighbouring tribes and villages.
01:08And so the actual composition of the army itself is very diverse.
01:13You have people who have left their families
01:16or people who have left raided villages.
01:18But there was a use for them.
01:21And that was to create this army.
01:23And they trained hard.
01:24And they were formidable.
01:30They basically were given to the kingdom.
01:33Now the stipulation was they couldn't get married.
01:36They couldn't have kids.
01:37They couldn't have sex.
01:38They were trained in martial arts.
01:40They were even trained in dancing, running.
01:43They were told to stifle their pain.
01:45That was a big, big, big thing.
01:47To be taught how to not feel pain,
01:50which is still something that I can't quite get my mind around.
01:54Because how?
01:56It was such an organic way of really taking young women's trauma
02:00and turning them into complete power.
02:03We fear no one.
02:05And we fear no pain.
02:27My king, the Europeans wish to conquer us.
02:31They will not stop until the whole of Africa is theirs.
02:35It was back-to-back war.
02:36And then they actually faced the Europeans.
02:39And there was waves and waves of, unfortunately,
02:42individuals who came in to try and change things in the landscape.
02:45I think King Gezo himself actually died in a coup.
02:48There's a whole bunch of conflict surrounding their existence.
02:51But also King Gezo, he understood the...
02:54He understood the gods ordained these women to be empowered
02:59and to be in this position.
03:00It was kind of like a fresh revamp to empowering them
03:04to protect the kingdom,
03:06which wasn't only a physical thing or a military thing.
03:09It was actually a spiritual thing also.
03:11You are asking me to take them to war?
03:14Some things are worth fighting for.
03:25I know growing up in America,
03:28what you're taught is that our history begins with enslavement.
03:31And there's a whole continent where we all came from
03:34that we don't know about.
03:35We don't know about the beauty of Africa,
03:37the beauty about all these different cultures,
03:39the fight that went into maintaining their cultures.
03:42And I wanted to bring that to the screen.
03:44And that is the conversation Viola and I had when we started this.
03:49We've got to show these women's humanity.
03:51We've got to show black women's humanity.
03:53We've got to show black women's humanity.