This drama, which had its Arab premiere in Jeddah on December 2, 2023, reveals a part of the social life of Arab women, particularly in Jordan, in its challenges, its losses, its victories and its sometimes difficult choices. The ever first Jordanian feature selected at Cannes Film Festival.
The director did not seek to emphasize the conflicts, but rather to direct the light towards the image of the "mother-courage", with the psychology of a fighter, notwithstanding the falsity of the male gender.
Physical space is an important aspect in this Jordanian feature film, directed by Amjad Al Rasheed (produced in 2023, with a duration of 113 minutes), Jordanian Entry at the 2023 Oscars, following a world premiere in Cannes (Critics' Week), and a release in the far North America, the same year. A space straddling uncertainty and hope, in the time of mourning.
Nawall experiences the sudden loss of her husband, who left in his sleep. A drama which delivers the widow to the pettiness of a brother-in-law determined to take her apartment. The missing person had incurred debts which had to be honoured.
Which has the gift of accelerating the pace of the film to crudely expose the repetitive moments of tension between the pregnant widow and the heartless brother-in-law. The director insists, in the option of close-up movement of paintings, within a reduced space, on this conflict.
But Nawall does not give in. On the contrary, the scenario wanted to give him psychological strength to weather the storm. Pregnant, she seeks to make ends meet by working for a rich family, as a domestic worker. And even within this, other intimate stories on the borders of despair intersect with his own, creating a spiral of doubts and shared fears.
Women's destinies tremble on the edge of anguish. They also constitute the bulk of the stage troupe, after the casting carried out by the Palestinian-Israeli actress. From the preachers, who came to religiously soothe the widow's heart, to the main characters, everything shows that the majority of scenes wear the dress. That of the woman suddenly resigned, but determined to defend herself against arbitrariness, without the help of the man whom the situation exposes to treachery, to the shameful refusal of responsibility.
Inshallah A Boy (Inchallah un fils) also reveals a love long hidden by one of the members of this wealthy family. The man falls in love with Nawall, but destiny and her disinterest will not give him the chance to experience it. This pregnancy that she is carrying remains the focus of all her attention and nourishes her hope of having this boy who brings deliverance, saving her and her eldest daughter from humiliation.
Medical visits to the doctor are the metaphor for this path to therapy. The ultrasound that liberates! The sex of the child becomes the weapon that repels all the fear of a tested mother, and beyond it, symbolizes, paradoxically, the character both fragile and resilient of feminine and perhaps... familial destinies.
Bassirou NIANG
@BassirouNI38612
