Boxer Ramla Ali sweeps into the green room of a West End cinema, tiny in a frothy dress with a huge skirt of cascading black feathers. It’s an absolute showstopper. She’s just introduced the premiere of a new film about her life.
There are messages on her phone from Bear Grylls and Malala Yousafzai, who are in the audience watching. But the person who matters most is her mum, who is seeing it for the fourth time. The film is In the Shadows, directed by Anthony Wonke and stars Top Boy actor Jasmine Jobson.
It tells the story of Ali’s journey to the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo. When she was a baby, her older brother Abdulkadir was killed in an explosion while playing. The family fled Somalia, making the perilous crossing by boat to Kenya, finally arriving in the UK as refugees.
Ali grew up in east London, joining a boxercise class at the local gym after being bullied at school about her weight. When she started boxing seriously, she kept it hidden from her family. As a Muslim girl, it would not be allowed.
And she knew that her mother, having moved heaven and earth to get the family away from violence, would be devastated seeing her in harm’s way. These days, her mum is the first person Ali calls after a fight. It was eight years ago that the idea of a film first came up.
Ali’s husband Richard Moore has just walked into the room. He used to be her coach and is also an executive producer on the film. He explains that one of the biggest reasons for pitching it back in 2018 was practical: they were broke.
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