Ramla Ali's Road to Tokyo Becomes a Film, In the Shadows

Jasmine Jobson plays British-Somali boxer Ramla Ali in In the Shadows, a biopic about the road that took Ali to the Tokyo Olympics. The film is directed by Anthony Wonke, and Jobson is best known to UK viewers as an actor in the drama Top Boy.

Ali was born in Somalia. Her older brother Abdulkadir was killed in an explosion while playing when she was a baby, according to The Guardian. The family fled by boat to Kenya and later arrived in the UK as refugees. Ali grew up in east London.

Her route into the ring was far from straight. At school she was bullied about her weight. She started going to a boxercise class at a local gym, a fitness session that uses boxing moves, and the training slowly became something more. At first she kept it from her family.

The boxing turned into a serious career. In 2015 she became the first Muslim woman to win an English amateur boxing title. She went on to compete in boxing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which were held in 2021 because of the pandemic.

Behind the ring work is a close partnership. Richard Moore, Ali's husband, is her former coach and an executive producer on the film. The couple lived in a home owned by the actor Idris Elba and his wife, Sabrina. Moore's role gives the project an insider's view of the years of training.

The film has already reached a wider audience. Bear Grylls and Malala Yousafzai were in the audience for its premiere. It has also been selected for the BFI London Film Festival 2026, the British Film Institute's annual showcase in the capital.

In a review for ScreenDaily, critic Jonathan Romney describes the film as a restrained biopic, with Jobson carrying much of its force. That restraint suits a story built on quiet grit: a child who did not know where her next step would lead, and an adult who chose to step into a ring in public.

There is one detail that stands out. Ali does not know her own date of birth, a gap in official paperwork that many refugees face. Her story, as told in the film, is about how far a person can travel from a childhood spent in the shadows, and what it takes to step into the light.

For anyone new to the sport, the appeal is simple. Boxing is one of the few arenas where a person's background counts for nothing once the bell rings, and the story of how someone reaches that moment often matters as much as the fight itself. In the Shadows puts that journey on screen.