As The Woman King rolls into theaters today, each the film’s forged and its director, Gina Prince-Bythewood, are excitedly anticipating wide audience response to the motion, drama, and majesty of the story centered on Dahomey’s Agojie warriors.

It’s a real-life legacy that the majority audiences frankly aren’t conversant in. The director says telling this hidden history, lost to most American audiences, peels back the curtain of mystery about where we got here from and serves as a counter to the teachings we’ve been given on where our story began.

“It really began with this story I desired to tell, which is about these incredible women that history knows nothing about. A lot of what we learned about our history in America is that it began with enslavement, and that’s just not the reality,” Prince-Bythewood tells ESSENCE. “There’s an incredible continent – not that distant – that has incredible cultures. It’s where we got here from. It’s where our ancestors got here from. So I desired to tell that story.”

The story of the Agojie’s fierce sisterhood and robust bond comes alive on screen, a translation of the close bond Prince-Bythewood and the forged formed with one another during preparation and filming this project.

“I feel that because the director, it’s my job to foster relationships which can be then going to point out up on screen,” she says. “So lots of us have never had an opportunity to inform a story like this. The responsibility we felt, the connection that so lots of these actors felt on to our ancestors, the will to get it right, all of us shared that, and the work ethic.”

That work ethic saw the forged – and Prince-Bythewood, who joined in out of solidarity – completing intense physical training to get in shape to finish their very own stunts and fight choreography for the film.

“That bonded everyone since it was so hard,” the director recalls. “They fed one another, pushed one another, they were competitive in one of the simplest ways and pulled one another through, and it’s beautiful that that might show up onscreen. ”

“It really all began with Viola [Davis]. All of them desired to tell this story, they desired to play these incredible characters, but they desired to play with Viola.”

Davis, the film’s lead who also co-produced the film through her production company JuVee, mentioned during ESSENCE’s roundtable discussion with the forged, she wasn’t entirely convinced that The Woman King would actually come to pass when the prospect of the film got here along. For Prince-Bythewood, the proven fact that the film is definitely hitting theaters today is nothing in need of miraculous.

“Each time I watch the movie, the word ‘miracle’ pops into my head,” she says. “It’s a miracle that this film is in existence, that it’s about to be put into the world. I’m just excited for others to see it because I understand how it makes me feel.”

“I do know if I had nothing to do with it how I’d feel to finally have the opportunity to enter the theater and see a story like this and see myself reflected like this. It’s all the things, and I’m just excited.”

Viewers on their method to the theaters this evening also needs to know to stay around after the initial set of credits. There’s a transient, yet impactful mid-credit stinger that speaks calls back to the film’s end, yet also encompasses its message in a poignant manner. For Prince-Bythewood, it was a crucial addition that tied our past and our present together in a subtle way.

“As a filmmaker, you will have a vision. I knew what this film was, but I also knew what it meant for me, as a Black woman. And that’s about ‘Say Her Name,’” she reveals. “It’s about honoring the Black women who’ve been within the struggle, who’ve died nameless, and it ends with a particular name that embodies our struggle of being invisible, of being unprotected. So, it was a callout in honor of us.”

The Woman King is now in theaters.