One in a Million

A profound cinematic odyssey filmed over a decade, this portrait of the coming of age of a Syrian girl in exile won Sundance’s Documentary Competition Audience and Directing awards.

When we meet Israa, she’s 11 years old, hustling to help make money for her family. A refugee from Aleppo, Syria, she has only just embarked on a journey across countries, cultures and bureaucratic barriers to find asylum in Europe. Once she settles into her adopted home of Cologne, however, life offers different challenges: a new language and culture to learn, and newfound Western freedoms clashing with her family’s traditions. Finally returning to Aleppo a decade later as an adult and witnessing the devastation that lingers, Israa reflects that, for all the immediate hardships of war, “it’s not as hard as what comes after”.

Across 2015 and 2016, at the height of the Syrian Civil War, over one million refugees entered Germany; but the story didn’t end there. Filmed over 10 years, this astonishing documentary – its emotional foundation built on the close relationship between Israa’s family and its directors, husband-and-wife team Jack MacInnes and Itab Azzam (herself born in Syria) – zooms in to relate one of those accounts in intimate detail. Both a narrative of displacement and assimilation and a shrine to the resilience of Syrian culture, this is a moving portrait of life flourishing in the wake of destruction.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival