One in a Million review
Director: Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes
Star rating: ★★★★
Israa, the subject of the new documentary One in a Million, faces the camera for over 10 years as she recounts her life story: fleeing Syria during the civil war, settling in Germany, and then deciding to return home. Co-directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes first met her as she was selling cigarettes on the streets of Turkey, and decided to listen to her story. Unflinchingly honest from the very first frame, One in a Million is a masterful document of a family trying to find a place to call home. (Also read: Documentary on a polar bear’s journey might be this year’s most essential piece of filmmaking | Review)
The premise
One in a Million wastes no time in following Israa’s journey as a girl who tags along with her family in Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War to escape. They are not the only family on the run, and the camera stays present alongside them on the boat, struggling to survive in spine-chilling weather conditions with little food and the constant threat of being sent back. Israa’s naivete, her big-hearted smile and enthusiasm are the guiding light through and through. It only lasts for a little while. When she finally breaks down in tears on camera, recalling how she saw two babies dying due to the cold, it is almost too wrenching to bear witness.
Israa and her family eventually settle in Cologne, Germany. However, as Israa points out, the real battle begins there. Over the years, she learns about Germany, the language, falls in love, and grows up to more agency and resilience on matters pertaining to her life. One in a Million intimately charts the destabilisation within Israa’s family as her father, Tarek, and mother, Nisreen, separate. Israa decides to marry her boyfriend, Mohammed, and begins a new life. Finally, after the war is over, she decides it’s time to return home.
What works
One in a Million is both epic and intimate, a sprawling saga that threads together the expanse of the refugee crisis and one family adjusting to displacement in a single breath. The tone is never melodramatic, even for once, an exceptional feat given that there are a lot of varying perspectives that are ushered in from the family members.
The documentary honours Israa’s agency as well as her conflicts. There are no easy answers. Israa knows what she wants, but she also knows it cannot be easy. To return will never be the same. The gaze of the film never intervenes in any moral conundrum of liberal empathy for its characters. They are flawed human beings who are desperately trying to make sense of a world bent on creating gaps. The intelligence and sensitivity with which Israa’s story is told make the difference, since this is as much about the fault lines of the world as it is about personal freedom.
One in a Million is deeply affecting in its portrait of a family looking for a place to call home. Infused with a radical sense of hope, this documentary creates space for the viewer to avoid assumptions about the refugee crisis. It is a major achievement.
