A Coming of Age Tale a Decade in the Making

The directors of the new documentary “One in a Million” couldn’t have chosen a more engaging protagonist for their exploration of migration, assimilation, and growing up than wide-eyed Israa from Syria. When Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes first spotted the 11-year-old girl in 2015 selling cigarettes at night in Turkey, they soon realized the opportunity she presented: a way to document the immense Syrian refugee crisis and Germany’s open-door policy through her and her family’s experience. With an open face and candid expressions, Israa is photogenic, endearing, and instantly sympathetic, particularly as a youngster having to deal with distressing events and changes, making for a captivating central figure in a sweeping real-world chronicle.Shot over ten years, the documentary initially follows Israa and her family, including her mother, father, siblings, and other family members, as they make the journey through Eastern Europe and arrive in Germany. While their arduous, at times dangerous, trek is undeniably riveting, it is the long process of settling in a foreign country that furnishes the feature not only with its thematic heft but some of its most dramatic material. Much as Richard Linklater did when making his 2014 film ‘Boyhood,’ Ms. Azzam and Mr. MacInnes periodically returned to their subjects — except that their film records real lives rather than fictional ones. The filmmakers also bookend their doc with Israa’s trip back to Syria after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2024, astutely framing the account with a war-torn variation on “You Can’t Go Home Again.”Early on, as we see little Israa take the filmmakers around the Turkish open-air market, she comes across as a cute, chirpy whippersnapper, like a character from an Italian neorealist classic, complete with a close relationship with her dad. Her asides about potentially dying when she and her family are to ride in a dinghy to Greece are so tossed off that they’re almost black comedy. She will never lose this strangely mature, almost ironic quality as the film progresses, even as the dimming of her youthful spirit over the decade, from childhood into her early twenties.The film’s “first act” consists of footage of the extended family as they prepare their exodus from Turkey, where they fled after bombings of their hometown of Aleppo, and their subsequent odyssey across multiple countries to reach Germany. Several moments linger in the mind: a short, nighttime cellphone video of their harrowing voyage via inflatable to Greece; their bleak, cold arrival in the cradle of Western civilization; glimpses of Israa’s disabled sister being pushed in a wheelchair over tough terrain; and tension at the Croatian border. It’s to be expected that this segment condenses their long slog, yet it would have been helpful if the directors had tracked it visually with a map, particularly as we’re shown how they encountered problems along the way. What’s more, studio-set interviews of Israa and her father describing the journey uncomfortably resemble reality TV confessionals and draw the viewer away from the immediacy of the raw footage, not to mention muddle the timeline of events. Once they arrive in Germany, where they are welcomed, the film jumps ten months to find them living in Cologne. We see Israa on her first day of school as well as her declaring her love of Justin Bieber and singing his bilingual hit “Despacito.” She behaves like any normal adolescent girl from the West, though of course she’s not, as her rejection of wearing a hijab highlights. While the filmmakers have featured several scenes with the father up to this point, who seems somewhat reasonable about adapting to German culture, Israa’s mother has generally appeared only on the sidelines. That is, until they present a one-on-one with the matriarch and she describes how she married young and barely would leave the home when they lived in Syria. They also flash back to a telling moment during their trek to Germany in which the mother pronounces her joy at being outside — an amazing admission considering the miserable conditions of their trudge. The film increasingly explores the discrepancy between the conservative values of her father and the liberties granted in a more open society during its middle section, with the directing duo catching up with Israa every few months or so as the girl grows more independent. As a Syrian-born woman who moved to the West herself, Ms. Azzam brings a natural sensitivity to the predicaments of Israa and her mother. As time goes by and tensions within the family escalate, a clear indictment of Muslim patriarchal traditions unfolds, even if the subject is never directly brought up beyond several mentions of freedom. What is eventually broached is a family secret, one that ultimately leads to a rupture between the parents.At certain points during the film, the settings of some scenes appear too set-up by the documentarians, particularly those involving the father that seek to play up his outsider status in his adopted country. Still, there’s no denying the pathos of a proud man who owned an eatery back in Syria and who doesn’t work for several years once in Germany. Our primary affinity, though, lies with Israa and her mother, even when the former seems to follow the life of the latter by falling in love with a man who likes her to wear a hijab and whom she marries at a young age. It’s as if Israa goes from one constrictive environment to another, though an important distinction is the element of choice on her part.By the time we see Israa back in Syria in 2025 as we do briefly at the movie’s start, we feel very close to the young woman and almost protective of her as she uneasily visits her husband’s hometown as well as her own destroyed Aleppo. It feels as foreign to her as Germany once was, and when a driver asks her if she’s staying or just visiting, she admits uncertainty. While she acknowledges her luck in escaping, the viewer has also been a witness to her alienation and contrasting impulses in Germany. The profound achievement of Ms. Azzam and Mr. MacInnes is that we not only come to understand where the uncertainty and duality stem from but are given the chance to perceive it, how the trauma of war is only the beginning of a constant liminal state for many refugees. By focusing on a Syrian young person and her family over an extended period of time, the deeply humanist “One in a Million” locates the struggles of displaced peoples everywhere.

A Coming of Age Tale a Decade in the Making

A Coming of Age Tale a Decade in the Making

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