REVIEW: إن شاء الله ولد [Inshallah a Boy] [2024]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 113 minutes
Release Date: January 12th, 2024 (USA) / July 16th, 2024 (Jordan)
Studio: MAD Distribution / Mona / Greenwich Entertainment
Director(s): Amjad Al Rasheed
Writer(s): Delphine Agut & Rula Nasser / Amjad Al Rasheed (story)

Everything is new to me.

First things first: Amjad Al Rasheed’s debut feature Inshallah a Boy is very good. With a compelling dramatic catalyst—the death of a Jordanian man leaving his widow (the always wonderful Mouna Hawa’s Nawal) in the hands of a court that holds hers and their daughter’s claim to his inheritance as inferior to all others related to the deceased—and a fearless drive to point out the many hypocrisies inherent to a government ruled by a patriarchal religion in the twenty-first century (not to mention how much America’s own legislators are adopting similar trends), the emotional weight equals the movie’s great production value.

Unfortunately, however, it also falls prey to a desire to not take its issues to their true (possibly nightmarish) ends. Yes, you don’t want the whole to fall into miserablism—especially considering a lot of what happens goes there anyway—but you also don’t want to subvert the message that one cannot simply rely on God by then letting God be reliable (albeit very late). Because I absolutely love how the first half of the film spells out the reality of the situation as God only “listening” to men. That God answers Rifqi’s (Hitham Omari) prayers for money through the death of his brother only to ignore his sister-in-law’s prayers for common decency.

The way co-writers Delphine Agut and Rula Nasser draw up the script, every pious necessity that Nawal has been indoctrinated by is gradually picked apart for its true purpose: to give men control over women’s lives. We’re watching life, justice, and even those who are supposed to be on her side (Mohammed Al Jizawi as her brother Ahmad) fail to support her in her time of need. We’re watching her faith be shaken with good reason—her eyes opening to the naïveté she didn’t know ruled her actions until her buffer’s absence (a husband doubling as guardian where Jordan is concerned) dumped everything at her feet.

One would therefore assume such an incisive and damning commentary on an unjust system would either find its victim empowered to overcome it or be forced to succumb. To show the horrors that befall this widowed mother and other more “modern” woman like Yumna Marwan’s Lauren (since Nawal is ostensibly being radicalized on-screen) is necessary to shine a light on how pervasive gender inequality is throughout the world, but so is providing hope it can be defeated or terror that it cannot. To choose to ignore those options and playing both sides as if nothing is actually wrong (awakening Nawal while also supplying a solution that further feeds the broken system) is disappointing.

It doesn’t ruin the experience, though. Al Rasheed doesn’t hide the fact that he’s moving towards the ending he inevitable gives us, so you do have time to make peace with the cop-out while also holding onto the belief he’ll get there in a way that won’t risk erasing the very truths he’s revealed through this embattled mother. And, despite that trajectory, Hawa is simply too good not to fully conclude that the potential “miracle” on the horizon won’t make her forget everything she’s seen. I wish the film did more to prove this prospect, but I’ll gladly assume it’s merely her chance to breathe a second so she can figure out how to leave Jordan and ensure her daughter will never endure the same injustice.