This comes ahead of the film’s upcoming theatrical release in Jordan on July 18th followed by one across the GCC and the Arab World at a later date.
After a historic world premiere at the 76th Cannes’ Critics Week — where it was the first-ever Jordanian feature film to be selected for the French festival — the film scored two prestigious awards: The Gan Foundation Award and the Rail D'Or Award for Best Feature Film before screening at over 100 prestigious film festivals and bagging over 25 awards during its highly successful festival tour.
The most recent of these awards is the Best Narrative Feature Award from the Muslim International Film Festival, the Best Feature Fiction Award from the 7th Beirut International Women Film Festival, the Best First Film Award from the Bengaluru International Film Festival, the Best Performance Award from the Red Sea International Film Festival, the Best Screenplay for a Narrative Feature Award from the Mystic Film Festival, the Best Performance from the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, and the Golden Frog for Best Directorial Debut at the esteemed Camerimage IFF in Poland, to name a few.
Highly praised by over 30 regional and international news outlets such as Screen Daily, the New York Times, Variety, Al Jazeera, and Independent Arabia, the film tells the story of the recently widowed Nawal, who has to save her daughter and home following her husband’s death in a society where having a son is a game changer.
Directed by Al-Rasheed and co-written alongside Delphine Agut and Rula Nasser, the film stars Mouna Hawa, Haitham Omari, Salwa Nakkara, Yumna Marwan, Mohammad Al-Jizawi, Islam Al-Awadi, and Celina Rabab'a.
Additionally, the film was produced by Nasser and Abu Ayyash; co-produced by Youssef Abdelnabi, Raphaël Alexandre, and Nicolas Leprêtre; associate produced by Alaa Karkouti, Maher Diab, and Shahinaz El-Akkad; lensed by Kanamé Onoyama (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE); edited by the prolific Ahmed Hafez (MOON KNIGHT); sound mixed by Nour Halawani; and scored by Jerry Lane. Also, Zeina Soufan and Nasser Zoubi served as the project's costume and production designers, respectively.
In terms of the larger companies at play, the film was produced by Imaginarium Films and co-produced by Georges Films and Bayt Al-Shawareb. Meanwhile, MAD Distribution and Lagoonie Film Production are in charge of the film’s sales and distribution all over the Arab-speaking world, and Pyramide International is handling international sales and distribution in France.
INSHALLAH A BOY is the second collaboration between Amjad and MAD Solutions, as the company had distributed the short film THE PARROT — which he co-directed —, the film won many international awards, including the Jury Prize at the Twin Cities Arab Film Festivals in Minnesota and the Malmo Arab Film Festival in Sweden. It had its world premiere at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2016 and is currently showing on OSN.
A Jordanian director and writer born in 1985, Al-Rasheed holds an MFA in cinematic arts with a focus on directing and editing. In 2016, he was selected by Screen International as one of five Arab Stars of Tomorrow — a list highlighting the up-and-coming young talents of the region. He also attended the Talent Campus during the 57th Berlinale, after which he directed short films that garnered nominations and won prizes at various Arab and international film festivals.
His filmography includes THE PARROT — a short film he co-directed in 2016 that was funded by the Film Prize of the Robert Bosch Stiftung — HIT THE ROAD (2011), and BITTER DAYS (2010).
As for Rula Nasser, she is an independent Jordanian producer with extensive experience in different aspects of the production of commercials, TV series, and low-budget films, all the way to big-budget studio films.
She kicked off her career working on projects with the BBC and Discovery and then worked for five years with the Jordanian Royal Film Commission before founding The Imaginarium Films in 2011. Since then the company’s productions have been selected for all manner of prestigious film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Berlinale, and Toronto.
