LOS ANGELES — "The Woman King" thrilled audiences when it premiered last year. The spectacle starring Viola Davis demonstrated director Gina Prince-Bythewood's mastery of character-driven storytelling and epic battle scenes alike. Many awards-season observers felt she should have scored an Oscar nomination.
Though Prince-Bythewood has cemented her status as one of the industry's most reliable filmmakers, she has not forgotten the near-catastrophe she encountered at the beginning of her career when she was a UCLA film student running out of money and time.
Lacking the resources to complete her thesis film, about a comedian using humor to cope with her trauma-filled past, she reached out, desperate, to Sandra Evers-Manly, then the head of the Beverly Hills chapter of the NAACP and an advocate for aspiring Black filmmakers.
