LONDON, Nov 6 (Reuters) – Israa was 11 years old and selling cigarettes with her father on a street corner in Turkey when filmmakers Jack MacInnes and Itab Azzam met the Syrian refugee in 2015.
They were charmed by the bubbly young girl and wanted to tell her story as her family, who had fled war-ravaged Aleppo, journeyed across eight countries to settle in Germany.
“We were with them the whole time … we slept with them … in the street, in the rain. We were, like, in freezing conditions in Serbia and Croatia … And by the time we arrived in Germany, it was like we became like a family and we really bonded,” Azzam told Reuters.
That was when the idea came about for “One in a Million,” the couple’s documentary filmed over 10 years following Israa to adulthood.
The intimate coming-of-age story shows Israa and her family crossing borders and adapting in Germany, where new-found freedoms jar with old traditions.
Viewers follow Israa into adolescence, marriage and motherhood as she seeks to find herself amid fracturing shifts at home. A married Israa eventually returns to visit Syria with her husband after the 2024 overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.
“Migration …(has) become such a sort of political football that has so much to do with the way we feel about each other and the way we feel about our own country and has so little to do with what it’s actually like to be a refugee,” MacInnes said.
“And what we hope is that you can watch this film and walk for an hour and a half in a refugee’s shoes and understand the complexity of it.”
“One in a Million”, which opens in UK cinemas on Friday, premiered at January’s Sundance Film Festival where it won the Audience Award.
“We… brought Israa out as a surprise, and the place just went wild,” MacInnes said.
“It was so emotional for us to see this girl… who we’d met 11 years previously … selling cigarettes on a street corner, being beaten up by police, no one gave a damn about her. And … suddenly here she is getting her moment.”
(Reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
