Starring Zimbabwean actress Charmaine Bingwa, the 2022 film Emancipation is looking set for an extremely rewarding 2022 awards season. On NAACP Image Awards’ recently announced list of nominees, it earned 5 nominations in various categories. The film was nominated for Outstanding Motion Picture, Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture, Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture (Will Smith), Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Antoine Fuqua) and Outstanding Costume Design.
Emancipation is a dramatic historical action thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua. It is co-produced by and starring Will Smith. Smith plays Peter, an enslaved man in Louisiana in the 1860s who escapes his plantation. Charmaine Bingwa widely known for her role as Carmen Moyo in The Good Fight, stars as Dodienne, Peter’s wife. Variety magazine has tipped her as one of their predictions for the 2023 Oscars in the Best Supporting Actress category, for her role in Emancipation.
The role has already earned Bingwa a nomination for the Outstanding Breakthrough Actress at the 2023 Black Reel Awards Nominations.
The film, written by William N. Collage, is loosely based on the real-life story of Peter and Gordon, two formerly enslaved Black men, and the photographs of Peter’s bare back, heavily scourged from an overseer’s whippings, that were published worldwide in 1863, giving the abolitionist movement proof of the cruelty of enslavement.
Bingwa is next set to appear as Isisa, a fierce and formidable warrior in King Shaka, also Executive Produced by Antoine Fuqua. She has also starred in Black Box as Miranda Brooks, part of Amazon’s Welcome to the Blumhouse anthology film series. Bingwa won the 2018 Heath Ledger Scholarship award. She also voiced Felicia Cox in both seasons of QCode’s successful podcast, The Burned Photo.
