Over the weekend, The Woman King debuted as the number one film in the country, earning $19 million at the box office and receiving high praise from moviegoers. This is a significant achievement for a Black woman-led historical drama set in 18th century Africa. Yet, despite the film’s groundbreaking success, some folks within the Black community are calling for a boycott of the film, arguing that it glosses over a significant history of slavery and violence.

The Agojie of Dahomey, real-life Black Amazons

The Woman King is set in the 19th-century West African kingdom of Dahomey, which occupied much of the southern portion of what is now Benin. The movie focuses on the Agojie, an all-female unit of warriors who served as bodyguards — as well as wives or mothers — for the king of Dahomey. This band of women warriors was regarded as Amazons by Europeans, likening them to the women warriors of Greek mythology, and the Agojie later served as inspiration for the Dora Milaje of the Black Panther comics and film franchise by Marvel.

In real life, the Agojie helped the Dahomey kingdom expand as a conquering force in West Africa, and the Dahomey Amazons fought a long but ultimately losing battle against French imperialists. The last Agojie women died in the mid-20th century.

Controversy over the slave trade

While the success of a movie highlighting a powerful but not well-known African kingdom is remarkable to many movie industry professionals and fans, a fierce campaign has arisen on social media calling for moviegoers, especially African Americans, to Boycott the movie. Critics of the movie point out that the Dahomey kingdom engaged in systematic enslavement and mass killings of peoples it conquered and accuse the movie of whitewashing these aspects of Dahomey’s history to present the kingdom and its warriors in a more heroic light. In West Africa, as in many places throughout history, captives taken in warfare were among the primary sources of enslaved people, and the Dahomey coast became a major source of slaves for Europeans exporting Africans to the Americas.

Social media calls to #BoycottTheWomanKing

A number of mostly Black users took to social media, calling for moviegoers to boycott The Woman King.

“Black ppl mistakenly believed White ppl invented slavery.” Posted Brotep The Inward Nerd, adding “But it’s tribes like the brutal #Dahomey who sold us into bondage.”

“If you’re a Black American that cares about your ancestors #BoycottTheWomanKing,” wrote TBMW. “The Dahomey fought to uphold slavery in Africa, just like the Confederacy”

Moviemakers defend the film

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood dismissed much of the criticism as coming from people who had only watched the film’s trailer and not the actual movie, which features a conflict over the slave trade as a central part of the story. Prince-Bythewood told IndieWire that “I learned early on you cannot win an argument on Twitter,” adding that the debate that erupted before the film’s release would “go away once they see the film.” Viola Davis, who stars in and produced the movie alongside her husband, Julius Tennon, agreed with Prince-Bythewood and added that the story, while based on true events, is also fictionalized, as is generally the case for historical dramas.

Now that The Woman King has been seen by far more people than predicted, some moviegoers and critics have jumped in to defend the movie for its power and cultural significance, even if it takes liberties with its history. Others, such as Slate‘s Ana Lucia Araujo, still argue that the movie softens the true history of slavery and the Dahomey kingdom. Thus, even as discussions of a potential sequel start to happen, the debate over the movie and the complicated history of slavery will continue.

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