After a starring role as Martin Luther King Jr. in Ava DuVernay’s Selma, David Oyelowo is playing another historical figure alongside Rosamund Pike in A United Kingdom, a drama based on the real life story of Botswana’s King Seretse Khama and his British wife Ruth Williams.

Right at the start of British apartheid in South Africa in the 1940s, a marriage between an African leader and a British woman probably sounds like a pretty terrible idea — and that’s exactly what everyone tells them, too. But love is stronger than colonialism, so the two decide to tie the knot anyway, and have to deal with both the British government’s increasingly antagonistic disapproval, and Prince Khama’s people’s instant dislike for their future king’s wife. Jack Davenport’s character Alistair Canning seems particularly nasty, especially when he informs Khama of his exile from British borders.

The film earned very positive reviews upon its premiere at this fall’s TIFF, with our own critic Erin Whitney calling it, “an interesting look at reactions to interracial marriage not often shown in historical dramas.” This is director Amma Asante’s third movie, whom you might recognize from the 2013 film Belle, about a mixed race daughter of an aristocrat in late 1770s England.

A United Kingdom opens in theaters February 17, 2017.

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