Interview: Amjad Al Rasheed – Inshallah A Boy

Set in Amman and in an unjust, severely outdated legal system where archaic rules are meant to keep in place the gender divide (here the inheritance law forgets that women exist), Inshallah A Boy (which premiered in the Cannes Critics’ Week section in 2023) plays like a social drama but is infused with enough twists and turns that we could easily mistaken it for a thriller. In Amjad Al Rasheed‘s feature debut (it was Jordan’s International Oscar entry for the Oscars – and the first ever selection at Cannes for a film from this country), we find ourselves nearly rendered defenseless and powerless observers in the face of a nuanced and challenging journey undertaken by the film’s focal point—Nawal, a recently widowed woman portrayed with remarkable groundedness by Mouna Hawa. At the 2023 Red Sea Film Festival (where it grabbed the Best Actress prize) I got to chat with the filmmaker about the structure of the screenplay (Al Rasheed co-wrote the film with producer Rula Nasser, and Delphine Agut), about his film’s lead and about his approach to the look of the film. Greenwich Entertainment release the film in the U.S.