In the Shadows review – true tale of Ramla Ali’s remarkable rise through the boxing ranks is a knockout

Jasmine Jobson goes the distance as the British-Somalian boxer battling pain from her past and her family’s disapproval in a heavyweight, tick-the-boxes production

The true-life success story of boxer Ramla Ali is confidently told in this capable picture from screenwriter Ursula Rani Sarma and documentary director Anthony Wonke, in his feature-film debut. Ali is the British-Somali boxer who escaped to the UK from the Somali civil war with her family as a refugee, and in 2021 became the first person to box for Somalia at Olympic Games. The boxing significance of her last name is actually not mentioned in the film – and I never noticed it until it flashed up in a kind of “fight card” intertitle before her first competitive bout.

She is fiercely played by Jasmine Jobson, from TV’s Top Boy; her supportive white Muslim-convert husband Richard – a hugely important figure in enabling Ramla to break away from her disapproving family and do as she wants – is played by Finn Cole, and her abusive trainer Clinton is Gershwyn Eustache Jr. This is a film that takes you through the classic boxing-movie scenes fluently enough: the nervous first appearance in the gym, the overbearing quasi-parental coach, the heartstopping fight debut. It was good to see the traditional closeup of post-fight sore fists in the ice-bucket. All in all, the film works better than Giant, the recent biopic of British-Yemeni boxer Prince Naseem, who is in fact briefly mentioned here.

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