An international gold medallist, Olympian and professional boxer has launched a film club in London for her women’s boxing club members.
British-Somali super bantamweight Ramla Ali launched Ramla Ali Sisters Club in 2018 to make a largely male-dominated sport accessible to Muslim women.
The club announced a partnership with Everyman cinemas last month to host free monthly film screenings for their community.
The launch event took place at Stratford’s Everyman with a screening of Coming to America (1988), which was introduced by Rwandan-Scottish actor and Doctor Who lead Ncuti Gatwa.
This week, the club held their second screening – White Men Can’t Jump (1992) – with an introduction by Game of Thrones actress Nathalie Emmanuel.
The film club will be playing classic movies once a month, every month this year, at Everyman cinemas – with more special guests promised.
Sisters Club member Hannah Kebede said: “The film club is important as it allows Muslim women of all ages and abilities to feel included and part of the Sisters Club community, where they might otherwise feel excluded.”
She added the film club is great for women in the community who are unable to engage in sports activities.
Ali’s boxing club was created with Muslim women in mind but is now attended by, and intended for, all women.
The club’s members, known as ‘Sisters’, are trained by experienced female coaches including amateur boxer and two-time national novice class belt holder Leander Rougier, who also teaches at Rivals Boxing Gym in Kings Cross.
Rougier said: “I think it’s important for girls and women to have a safe space to train. A lot of women don’t feel comfortable training in a male dominated sport, especially when it comes to boxing.
“The Sisters Club is not just for Muslim women, it’s for women in general. But I think especially when it comes to Muslim women, people think they’re going to be quite stiff and boring or whatever, but we’re just women and we have a laugh.
“We talk about whatever, do you know what I mean? There’s no kind of like, ‘I have to watch what I say or how I act’ just because someone’s a certain religion. Everyone just comes together.”
After fleeing her home country during the Somali Civil War, Ali trained as a boxer in London and went on to become the first boxer to represent Somalia at the Olympics.
However, she struggled with the accessibility of the sport along the way as women’s changing rooms, for example, hardly existed in boxing gyms in the early 2000s.
Since establishing Ramla Ali Sisters Club, she has made the sport accessible to a number of women – not only in London, but in New York and Florida where the boxing classes are also held.
Featured image: Tanya Fevzi
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