INSHALLAH A BOY wins Best Feature Fiction at 7th Beirut International Women Film Festival

Marking its 14th award during its highly successful festival tour, Amjad Al-Rasheed’s critically acclaimed Jordanian feature—and the country’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards—INSHALLAH A BOY has won the Best Feature Fiction at the 7th edition of the Beirut International Women Film Festival, which ran from April 14th to 19th in Beirut, Lebanon.

Highly praised by over 30 regional and international news outlets and screened at over 20 film festivals, winning 14 awards, INSHALLAH A BOY captivated French audiences last month when it hit the country’s cinemas with over 35,000 tickets sold.

Set to embark on a wide theatrical tour across the Arab world in parallel to its screening at different film festivals across the globe, 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.

Previously, INSHALLAH A BOY made history when it was the first-ever Jordanian feature film to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival, receiving two prestigious awards—the Gan Foundation Award and the Rail D'Or Award for Best Feature Film.

In addition to these awards, the film received the Best First Film Award from the Bengaluru International Film Festival, 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.

Among the most recent reviews INSHALLAH A BOY has received so far is the one for The New York Times, where Lisa Kennedy called it "a tense and accomplished directorial debut,” and the one for Iman Mohamed of Al Jazeera, crediting the creators for their brilliance in capturing scenes inspired by real-life events.

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 Solutions and Lagoonie Film Production are in charge of distributing it all over the Arab 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.