Sam Davies

New sports biopic In the Shadows, starring Top Boy’s Jasmine Jobson, tells the incredible story of British-Somali boxer Ramla Ali, with much of it filmed at Europe’s only free boxing gym, hidden round a corner in east London. The location: Broad Street Amateur Boxing Club, London, E1  The scene: Ramla Ali is a boxer born in Somalia whose family fled the country during the civil war, after her older brother was killed by a mortar while playing outside. They eventually arrived in east London, where Ali secretly began learning to box before turning professional and eventually becoming the first boxer to represent Somalia at the Olympics in 2021. Photograph: Sam DaviesBroad Street Amateur Boxing Club In new biopic In the Shadows, Ali is portrayed by Top Boy and MobLand star Jasmine Jobson, with most of its fighting scenes filmed at Broad Street Amateur Boxing Gym, an unassuming building on a leafy street in Shadwell. As director Anthony Wonke (whose other credits include documentaries Ronaldo and The Director and the Jedi) explains, this isn’t where Ali actually learned to fight, but it was perfect for the film. ‘We went to a bunch of very good-looking, very cinematic gyms,' he says. ‘I think Guy Ritchie’s used them and you see them in ads and they’re great, but they’re very familiar. I wanted to find an unknown. We stumbled across Broad Street and it changed everything. You have these vivid colours of the boxing ring, blues and reds, mixed with these dark corridors where you

Pop quiz: what connects Pirates of the Caribbean, Skyfall, Fast and Furious, Bridgerton and Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties?  Locations spotters will clock that each of those Hollywood blockbusters (and Netflix hits) have scenes that were filmed at Greenwich’s famous Old Royal Naval College – and the World Heritage Site is now share its big-screen secrets via a new walking tour called ‘Wigs, Weddings, Powder and Palaces’. The tour will even catapult visitors back in time to cinema’s silent era. Great War veteran and filmmaker Harry Bruce Woolfe shot scenes from his silent film Sons of the Sea at the Naval College in 1925, the first time the site was used for a motion picture. Its popularity among location scouts blew up in the ’70s and ’80s as John Schlesinger’s Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Thirty Nine Steps (1978), and Octopussy all filmed scenes here, before Four Weddings and a Funeral, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and The Mummy Returns booked the site around the turn of the millennium. Even more attention came in the years that followed as Disney, Marvel, Netflix and the BBC all took advantage of the old English aesthetic of Christopher Wren’s 17th century designs, along with the likes of Ridley Scott, Steve McQueen, Ang Lee and Sam Mendes.  Photograph: Tigz RiceOld Royal Naval College The total number of movies filmed at the College is officially 102 (and counting), but its popularity has surged in recent years. Sixty-eight films have shot here since 2005 – plus 46 TV se