SHADOW BOXING. Ramla Ali’s incredible story is now a brilliant boxing biopic

Boxing feature film In the Shadows has its premiere at the London Film Festival this week, with a wider release to come.

Helen M Jerome and Ron Shillingford talk to the subject, Ramla Ali, and the actor playing her, Jasmine Jobson, about the movie as well as Ali’s own short film, How to Hide it.

Warning: may contain banter!

Main reason to see the boxing biopic In the Shadows is that it’s a wonderful story, beautifully filmed, and with a gritty authenticity, especially in the performance of Jasmine Jobson – who you’ll know from Top Boy and MobLand – in the lead role.

The narrative arc follows the journey of young east Londoner Ramla Ali from Somali child to bullied schoolgirl to champion boxer, overcoming the triple challenges of being a young woman, being a woman of colour, and being Muslim. So she’s not just taking on the expectations of the boxing world, but also her quietly conservative family and what they’ve mapped out as her future.

But Ramla Ali is not the kind of woman to sit back and accept her fate. Determined, verging on stubborn, she trained then competed secretly, until her family found out. Meeting her today, you immediately sense her resolve, which has driven her own fighting career, but also helped her finally get this feature film In the Shadows made, along with a self-funded short movie, How to Hide it. Both are launched at the BFI London Film Festival, and the short is deservedly up for an award too.

Before going into our conversation, here’s some more detailed background on Ali’s importance in sporting and barrier-breaking terms.

Unique

Ramla Ali is unique for many reasons, but mainly for being the first Somali woman to become a professional boxer, the first boxer to represent her birth country of Somalia at the Olympic Games, and the first to win an international gold medal for Somalia. The 37-year-old east Londoner competed at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Hers is an even more amazing story considering she initially hid her boxing involvement from her strict, traditional family out of fear of disapproval and the cultural stigma surrounding Muslim girls in combat sports, winning national amateur titles in the UK before her mother even knew!

Ali’s importance to Muslim women cannot be overstated. She twice won the English National Amateur Championship and the Great British Championship prior to turning pro, which inspired a whole generation of others who would not have even stepped into a boxing gym otherwise.

She knows all about the pain and hardships of refugee status having fled the Somalia civil war as a baby after her older brother was killed by a stray grenade. The family caught a boat to Kenya before settling in London.

Bursting with ambition and fully committed to raising the profile of Somali sportswomen, Ali self-funded her Olympic journey for five years at a personal cost of £300,000. She also founded a charitable initiative providing free, weekly, women-only boxing spaces for Muslim women, minorities, and survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault to learn self-defence.

Ali helped establish Somalia’s boxing federation in Mogadishu. Plus, she serves as a UNICEF UK ambassador, a Nike Global Athlete, and is a prominent voice for refugees and racial equality. So she is quite the role model, as well as being a boxing champion.

Ali’s professional record is 11 wins and two losses. Her next bout is for the vacant IBF and WBO women’s junior featherweight (super bantamweight) titles in November. She faces the undefeated Mikiah Kreps (11-0) at the College Park Centre in Arlington, Texas. It will be broadcast on ESPN (US), Sky Sports Main Event (UK) at around 4am British time on Sunday, 8 November.

We sat down at the BFI on London’s South Bank to chat with Ramla Ali (right) and actor Jasmine Jobson (left) about both films, how hard it was to get the projects off the ground, and how they got it so right.

First off, for each of you, which is your favourite women’s sport movie?

Jasmine Jobson: Oh, ours!

Ramla Ali: I was going to say something else, but I love that!

As my mum used to say, the bees’ knees and some.

I’m missing out a whole line because it’s got a swear word in it…

JJ: I’ve never heard that saying.

RA: Oh yeah, dogs’ bollocks, bees’ knees, and some.

Yeah, it’s basically what you say when it is the best.

So, Jasmine, can I ask you what drew you to the whole project?

JJ: I would say Ramla’s story as a whole.

When I was given the script, I was told that I need to read it ASAP… and get an answer ASAP.

So I picked up the script, and within the first ten minutes, I was crying.

I mean, that says it all.

So bad?

RA: [laughs loudly!]

JJ: No, honestly, I’m a very emotional person as it is.

I watch X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, and I start crying.

RA: What?

JJ: You know, yeah, I’m an emotional person, babe.

Like, I can start laughing and I’m crying.

RA: Wow.

JJ: I’m literally hysterical. It’s crazy.

I’m very, very in touch with my emotions.

That’s why I’m so good at what I do.

RA: In the film, everyone said they were bawling their eyes out in the final scene between you and the mum [acted by Hodan Yusuf].

JJ: Oh yeah, babe. I was crying my eyes out.

RA: Everyone said that scene was so powerful that even the toughest men that I’d asked to come and watch at the cast and crew screening were in tears.

They said to me that you ‘got me’ in that scene.

It’s a testament to her and her craft and how good she is.

If she can make the most macho of men cry… and herself.

That’s really hard.

Crying on camera is really hard.

JJ: So, everything I touch turns to gold!

Ramla, how hard initially was it for you to get the whole project off the ground?

RA: Basically, this project started circulating in 2018. Me and my husband, Richard, we were really, really poor, and we needed some money.

My husband’s background is film, so he started pitching my story to different people, different outlets, to make it as a documentary, calling it The Road to Tokyo because the Tokyo Olympics were about to come up.

And Richard was one of the first few people who believed in me.

He knew I was going to get to the Olympics, even when I was doubting myself.

And so many people just shut the door on him.

Didn’t really care. Said no. This isn’t a documentary.

And the project landed on Anthony’s [director Anthony Wonke, above] desk, who they’d worked on with on a previous project.

Anthony said: “No, this isn’t a documentary. This is a film, and I want to tell the story.”

And this was 2018, and it’s just having its premiere now.

So it’s been a long time.

In terms of getting funding and support and all those practical things, how long after 2018 did that start to fall into place? Are we talking post-pandemic, basically?

RA: Yeah, basically, the pandemic really put everything, put life on a standstill.

No-one was working.

It was hard getting meetings, and obviously, you could do zooms, but this face-to-face interaction is a lot better than us meeting over zoom.

And it was held for a bit, and then…

Nothing happened, then everything happened, is that it?

RA: Kind of, yeah.

Basically, yeah, nothing happened, and then everything happened, and we got loads of amazing investors.

And what about with your short, How to Hide it (above, also starring Ali)? How hard was it to get that one off the ground, or was that easier?

RA: I funded the short myself. Me and Richard funded it ourselves.

It was expensive.

JJ: Believe in your own source, babe.

You have to believe your own source.

RA: I remember when we started 786 Productions, Richard has always wanted to direct, and we knew that first-time directors don’t really get it easy.

And we had to show proof of concept.

Hence the birth of How to Hide It.

We wrote it, we directed it, we funded it.

We asked loads of favours.

Loads of people worked for free.

Some didn’t… and it’s been doing really, really well in the festival circuit.

I think a lot of people can resonate with it, and it’s funny.

Comedy and romance do really well.

And how much of it is close to your own life in the short film (below), Ramla?

RA: I mean, I’ve never gambled.

Yeah, I’ve never played the lottery.

JJ: You kind of did with destiny.

You didn’t know how it was going to go.

RA: She’s so clever.

JJ: We all do it in life, you know.

It’s like even with me, I didn’t necessarily know how life was going to go.

You know, I could have stayed being that little troublemaker that got me the title of the worst-behaved child in Westminster, or I can manifest like the multi-talents that my parents tried to manifest from when I was very, very young.

You know, it’s always a gamble.

You never know if you’re going to win or not.

In our case, we won.

It was just a gamble that actually made sense.

And this question is for both of you. How much you were involved day to day?

Obviously you were involved in development, pre-production, Ramla, because you just said it went on for eight years to fruition?

But in terms of being there on the set, how much that helped you as well, Jasmine, if you can talk a bit about that together.

JJ: I mean, I loved having Ramla on set.

As an actor, you’re used to going on set, and you’ve got your script and you just get your job done.

So it was really nice to be able to look back at Ramla and ask questions, and ask for guidance, even the support of being like: am I getting it right?

Is there anything that you feel that I need to change?

Is there anything you want me to do differently and things like that?

You know, and just feeling I’ve got that constant support, because I want to get it right.

I need to get it right.

You know, this is her story.

I have to do it justice.

So, I mean, having having Ramla there with me on set has been a massive, massive input into this, and then after a while, when I realised that she trusts me and trusts my intuition, eventually I just learnt to trust myself.

Yeah, then Ramla be like: oh my God, Jasmine, this is so real.

Yeah, this is really, really good.

This is exactly how it was, you know.

And I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t there!

So, it’s nice that we actually do think the same.

And were there any bits where you had to step in to make it feel more authentic?

Where you had to say, “No, no, you wouldn’t do it like this. You’d do it like this.”

RA: No, it was just like certain bits were like… just I usually do this [she shimmies] at the end.

Okay, great… I’m gonna do that every time.

Or I usually do this at the beginning.

Okay, great… You’re boxing.

Have your little shimmy just before a little shake at the beginning.

Everyone used to make fun of me for doing that little shake at the beginning, but everyone’s got their own thing, haven’t they?

The little shake, and then she started doing the shake, and everyone was just laughing at me.

So yeah, it was great.

And have you ever boxed before, Jasmine?

JJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did boxing when I was younger.

I also did karate, and then obviously through my own life experiences, I had my own little street fighting experiences.

Yeah, before my career, I used to say I’ve had more fights than I’ve had cooked dinners.

Now that is completely different.

I’ve had more dinners than I’ve had fights!

So that’s a win.

But I’ve been very much a physical person from a very young age.

So when it came down to tapping into boxing on Top Boy, it was very easy for me to jump into.

Then when it came down to taking on Ramla’s role, it was easy for me to jump into.

But I’m not going to sit here and say it was easy.

It was easy pretending to be an amateur boxer.

It’s not easy becoming a champion.

I mean, I did that in two weeks, and I can honestly say that I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to be 100 per cent happy with everything that I’ve done.

But now looking back and looking at the film itself, I’m extremely proud, and the amount of work that I put my body through, the conditioning that I had to put my body through… I have a lot of respect for fighters.

I’ve been watching fighting, MMA, and all of that since I was a little girl.

Like Michael ‘Venom’ Page, he’s an MMA fighter and one of my very good friends.

Watching fighting and all that – that’s my world.

It was physically enduring, but so worth it.

Were there any particular bits that were hard to do in terms of the acting and fighting?

Yes. When I accidentally got punched in my nose when we were filming!

There was there was a little part of me that went into the little old school of fight.

You’ve just been hit. You need to fight!

And then another part of me was like: no, Jasmine, professional mode!

This isn’t an actual fight. This is a whole scene.

It was an accident.

But naturally, if you get hit, first thing, you’re going to get angry.

So that was the first, initial thing.

But yeah, again, it’s about conditioning.

It’s about disciplining and training your mind to be able to understand that.

We’re going to take a couple hits.

It is what it is.

We are fighting!

Ramla, you’ve got a big world title fight coming up, haven’t you? November 8 in Texas. And that’s quite a tough one, isn’t it?

So, how are you marrying the two: promoting this film and getting ready for world… surely you should be in training?

RA: Honestly, I don’t feel like anybody takes into account the level of work, dedication that goes into training.

Everybody just wants what they want.

Normally for world title fights, you have six to eight weeks training camp, so you should be there now.

Basically what I’m saying, what would have been helpful, and it’s got nothing to do with you, is if you guys came to me at my gym.

That would have been helpful, but everybody wants what they want.

They want me to come here.

But I just get in the car.

People don’t understand the level… for example, to make today work, I had to wake up at 5.30am, beg my sparring partners to spar at 8am – and who wants to be in getting hit at 8am?

Leave the gym by 10, drive back home, because I train in Romford with John Ryder and Tony Sims, and so it’s about an hour and a half from my house.

Come back home, wash my hair, which smelt like a wet mop!

I smelt disgusting.

I smelt like dirty hand wraps.

Shower, get ready, then have someone make me look pretty, and then come here.

And then after this, I’ve got to go back and do strength and conditioning.

So it’s a lot.

But the thing is, if things are important to you, you make time, you dedicate…

Showing this film to the world, making this film a success, is very important to me.

It took eight years to get here.

November 8, winning a world title is very important to me, and I’m going to find time to do both, 100 per cent.

If it kills me…

One last question – who’s your favourite sportswoman?

JJ: I like Serena Williams.

RA: Snake. I was going to say the same thing!

JJ: Say Venus.

RA: I was going to say Venus. It has to be.

Yeah, they’re sensational.

In the Shadows has its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 9, with additional showings on October 10 and 16.
Book here: https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/mapSelect.asp

How to Hide it is competing in the short film category, premieres at the BFI London Film Festival, and you can watch it for free here: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-how-to-hide-it-2026-online

Ramla Ali faces Mikiah Kreps at College Park Centre in Arlington, Texas on Sunday 8 November. It will be broadcast on ESPN (US), Sky Sports Main Event (UK) at around 4am UK time.

Photos: BFI, Ron Shillingford, Helen M Jerome