Belle director Amma Asante returned with another historical drama this year, A United Kingdom. Premiering back at TIFF and now set for a February release from Fox Searchlight, the story follows David Oyelowo as Seretse Khama, a former African royal who married Englishwoman Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), causing a great deal of controversy. Ahead of the release, the first U.S. trailer has now landed.
We said in our review,”In the end, the wonderful performances merely prove part of a serviceable historical drama with a desire it can’t quite fulfill of being more. The central love becomes a catalyst; the romance I believed would sustain us proving a hot-button issue at the worst possible moment that simply gets the ball rolling and mind working to separate natives and colonizers once and for all.”
Check out the trailer below for the film also starring Jack Davenport, Tom Felton, Terry Pheto, and Laura Carmichael.
A UNITED KINGDOM is the true story of the forbidden love of King Seretse Khama of Botswana (David Oyelowo) and Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), a white woman from London, which caused an international uproar when they decided to marry in the late 1940’s just as apartheid was being introduced into South Africa. It was a decision that altered the course of African history.
A United Kingdom opens on February 17, 2017.