Greenwich Entertainment shared the official trailer for Inshallah a Boy (Inshallah Walad), the Arabic thriller selected as Jordan’s official submission for Best International Film at the 96th Academy Awards. Mouna Hawa stars as Nawal, a widow who pretends to be pregnant with a son in order to save her daughter and home from a relative exploiting Jordan’s patriarchal inheritance laws.
Also starring in the film are Haitham Omari, Yumna Marwan, Salwa Nakkara, Mohammad Al Jizawi, Eslam Al-Awadi, and Celina Rabab’a.
Release Date
Directed by Jordanian filmmaker Amjad Al Rasheed, making his feature debut, Inshallah a Boy world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival’s 62nd Critics Week; and opens in theaters on January 12, 2024, followed by on VOD on March 12, 2024.
Synopsis
After the sudden death of her husband, Nawal is struggling to cope with the upheaval in her life. However, her pain is soon compounded by the possibility of losing her home to her brother-in-law. Desperate to keep her home and provide a stable life for her daughter, Nawal resorts to deception by faking a pregnancy. But as time passes, the lie becomes harder to sustain and Nawal faces a difficult choice. With only three weeks to find a solution, Nawal embarks on a journey that challenges her fears, beliefs, and morality, as she fights to secure her rightful inheritance and protect her daughter’s future.
Reviews
Called a ‘masterful thriller’ in their review, Variety wrote, “Indeed, “Inshallah a Boy” moves like a sleek thriller, but is full of the unsolved mysteries and dangling question marks of real life: the locked phone for which Nawal cannot guess the password; the condoms she finds in Adnan’s jacket; Adnan’s layoff, which she had never known about; the malicious or maybe simply careless reason he never signed the damn form in the first place.”