Олимпийн боксчин Рамла Алигийн амьдралын түүхийг өгүүлэх “In the Shadows” кино нээлтээ хийлээ

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. What does she think? “She loves it,” says Ali quietly. 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.

And what a journey. Ali was born in Somalia. 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. “We were down to our last hundred quid. We were lucky at that time, we had friends who took us in and housed us.” For a while they were a living in a home owned by Idris Elba and his wife, Sabrina. “They were our saviours. Then we got Covid and had to stay for ages,” giggles Ali.

Did she have any doubts about making the film? She nods: “Yes. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be so vulnerable, to sit down with a writer and tell her everything about my life, things I haven’t shared before.” There was her family’s trauma to consider, too: “I remember thinking, how is it going to affect my mum? It’s my story, but it’s her story as well. When I talked to my family, none of them were really up for it.” In the end, unexpectedly, it was her mother who came round first. And she had strong opinions about the script too: “My mum was adamant that the scene when my brother got killed be included. It had to be in.” Moore thinks it was a way of keeping him alive: “Remembering him, and making his death mean something bigger.”

Ali has gone quiet. After a moment she says that Abdulkadir being killed set in motion a sequence of events that changed all their lives in her family: “His death is the ripple effect. If my brother hadn’t died, we wouldn’t have come to the UK. I wouldn’t have taken up boxing. I wouldn’t have met Richard. My life would be so different.”

She says the film is not a pro-immigration statement. But it does offer another point of view to the fearmongering about migrants arriving on boats and stealing British jobs. “It’s depicting a human migrant story. Immigration has been weaponised politically to drive division in this country. Positive migrant stories don’t sell newspapers in the same way, so they rarely get told. But they are far more representative of the people who come here and build lives, families and careers. If audiences walk out seeing a person rather than a headline, the film has done its job.”

She is the living proof of a positive migration story. In 2015, Ali became the first Muslim woman to win an English amateur boxing title. Six years later, she competed at the Tokyo Olympics as the first boxer in history to represent Somalia. She has modelled, appearing on the cover of British Vogue guest edited by the Duchess of Sussex. In 2018, she set up Sisters Club, a charity providing free boxing classes to vulnerable women. She is a Unicef ambassador.

Ali tells me she worked hard behind the scenes of In the Shadows, reading every draft of the script, on set every day of the shoot. “Some exec producers just write their names on the film. But I worked for that title. I earned it.” She even body doubled in the boxing scenes.

Ali has been thinking lately about life after boxing. She and Moore have written and directed a comedy film together, Not Like Us, and she’s dipped her toe into acting too. “Boxing’s not for ever. There comes a day where you think: It’s time. Everyone laughs at me, but I keep saying it’s very similar to boxing. The dedication you’ve got to put into your boxing will show on the night in the ring. It’s the same with film-making. The level of dedication you’ve got to put in will show on screen.”

What kind of films does she want to make? “I feel like in America there are so many films made for black people. I would love to be able to be in a position to tell more stories focused on the Black British experience.”

It’s a sunny afternoon when I catch up with Jasmine Jobson, who plays Ali in the film. She took over from Letitia Wright, who was initially attached to the project. Jobson arrives at the BFI Southbank with a full entourage – publicist, makeup and hairdresser. “There’s not one part of my team that can be missing,” I hear her say as she strides across the room in Louboutin heels.

She looks in fabulous shape. Is that the boxing? “Thank you. No. I haven’t continued boxing. I do need to get back into it.” She is focused on physio for an old shoulder injury, picked up years ago at the gym. “At college, I was training to be a personal trainer. I just pulled a bit too much weight down on a lat-pull.”

Did she get into the swing of the boxing easily? “Yeah. Straight in. When I was young, I did karate, kickboxing, things like that. But I only had two weeks to prepare for this job. Literally two weeks to become a champion.” She spent eight hours a day training: “I absolutely loved boxing. I just don’t like getting my face touched. No one’s allowed to get my face. This is my money maker.”

Jobson says she fell in love with Ali the moment they met for coffee. “We had a nice little chat and got to know each other on a bit more of a deeper level. She’s overcome so much. To come out the other side, and to be an international success, to be able to change perceptions …” Jobson pauses. “Something might feel distant, or not necessarily accepted. But if you are passionate about it, and you are very good at it, if it’s your talent, go for it. You can be a success story no matter what your dream is. She’s a testament to that. Kudos to her, man.”

Did it feel intimidating taking on the part of a real-life person, I ask. “No. Not all. Any role I’ve played, I’ve incorporated myself into it.”

Like Ali, her experience of childhood adversity makes her achievements doubly impressive. As a young child, Jobson’s parents encouraged her talent for performing. But when she was in secondary school, social services became involved with the family. Jobson moved out of her mother’s house to live with her grandmother. Then, aged 14, she took the decision to place herself in foster care: “I had to do a very very deep dive within myself and take myself away from bad crowds, and figure out what my destiny was. My brain got a little bit clouded, and I had to find Jasmine again.”

A family friend suggested she try out for The Big House, a theatre company in north London that works with care leavers, and there she got an agent. Like Ali, she is a grafter, and learned lines in Somali for In the Shadows. She gives me a phrase in Somali: “It means: ‘I just want you to be proud of me.’ That’s all I’ve ever wanted – for my family and everybody to be proud of me.”

It sounds as if she put a lot of herself in the role. “Oh, 100%. But at the same time, I had to make sure it was authentically Ramla.” She can see the similarities, she admits: “It’s not that we’ve had the same life experiences, but we both had struggles and we both had a dream.”