18/05/2023 - CANNES 2023: In this debut feature by Jordanian director Amjad Al Rasheed, a widow contends with the country’s patriarchal inheritance laws, as her only child is a daughter

With last year’s female-led uprisings against the “morality police” in Iran, and the slowly growing liberalisation of gender roles in Saudi Arabia, a new global focus on and solidarity towards women’s rights in Arab countries are emerging. This is the precise context that Amjad Al Rasheed’s first feature, Inshallah a Boy [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – the first-ever Jordanian film to play at Cannes – will be received, although it’s pragmatic enough to filter this current unrest into a suspense narrative with a ticking clock, hinging on the tense drama of court depositions and tactical lies. The film, whose screenplay is appropriately co-written by two female writers, Rula Nasser and Delphine Agut, premiered early on during Cannes’ Critics’ Week.

The domestic legal reality that propels Inshallah a Boy is the fact that property ownership is an exclusively male domain, with numerous restrictions in place barring women’s inheritance rights. Nawal (Palestinian actress Mouna Hawa), a recently widowed elder carer, begins the film at risk of losing her home to her deceased husband’s family, with her deceptively mild-mannered brother-in-law Rifqi (Hitham Omari) forcing the handover process. Beyond the ambiguous status of her original housing deed, her sole child being Nora (Celina Rabab’a), a daughter rather than a vital son, further invalidates her claim to retain the property. Whilst similar cases in Jordan can bypass these grave circumstances (and indeed, Al Rasheed’s own familial inspiration for the story avoided the worst), this law is compounded by the film’s own “Murphy’s law”: that Nawal needs to pass through various booby traps of plot escalation that makes its events less plausible, and more like a “movie”, compelling an audience to lean in.

The film strongly evokes a flattering comparison to Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian efforts, especially A Separation and The Salesman [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]: a top-to-bottom accounting of a repressive society laden with class antagonism, all given extra spice as we learn that the wealthy family Nawal works for is Christian. Fascinatingly contrasted as a matriarchal brood, they are composed of Colette (Siranoush Sultanian), suffering from dementia and in Nawal’s charge, and her daughter Souad (Salwa Nakkara) and more liberated granddaughter Lauren (Yumna Marwan); the contrasting attitudes towards childbearing and maternal duty between Lauren and Nawal, and the over-insistent romantic interest of Colette’s physio Hassan (Eslam Al-Awadi) in Nawal as well, provide further narrative sidepaths for Al Rasheed to enrich his central thesis.

Inshallah a Boy is fairly gripping as it unfolds, but as Nawal’s schemes to potentially conceive another child, or deceive her opponents about that likelihood, grow ever more outlandish, it begins to convince more as an empowering arc for her (just check out her growing mettle to confront a catcaller, appearing at three instances in the film) than as a satisfying response to the country’s patriarchal dominance. And its liberal-minded audiences will need no persuading of its agenda; as ever, those unlikely to see it are the ones who need it in front of their eyes the most.

Inshallah a Boy is a co-production by Jordan, France, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, staged by The Imaginarium Films, Georges Films and Bayt Al Shawareb. World sales are by Pyramide International. The movie participated to the Red Sea Lodge 2020, programme by TorinoFilmLab and Red Sea Film Festival, addressed to filmmakers and to professionals coming from Saudi, Arab and African worlds.