– Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes follow a girl and her family’s extraordinary journey from Syria to Germany and back again over the course of ten years
Filmed over the course of a decade, One in a Million offers an intimate portrait of displacement, belonging and generational change through the life of a single Syrian family. Co-directed by Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes, the documentary follows Israa from the age of 11 as she and her relatives prepare to cross the Aegean Sea in search of safety, before eventually settling in Germany. The pic, premiered at Sundance (where it scooped the Award for Best Directing and the Audience Award), has now played in the Highlights strand of CPH:DOX.
Azzam and MacInnes adopt a patient, observational approach that proves crucial to the film’s emotional impact. Much of the narrative unfolds through carefully composed, everyday scenes interspersed with brief, controlled interviews that allow the characters to articulate their feelings without turning the film into a didactic exercise.
Spanning the better part of a decade, the footage already carries the weight of another era. The optimism and uncertainty surrounding Germany’s decision to welcome roughly one million Syrian refugees hangs over the early sections of the film set in 2015, recalling a moment when Europe appeared, at least temporarily, open to humanitarian solidarity. Watching these sequences today inevitably evokes a sense of distance, as the continent increasingly grapples with resurgent xenophobic politics.
Rather than approaching these issues head-on through political commentary, One in a Million addresses them through the shifting dynamics of a single family. At the centre stands Israa herself, whose journey from adolescence into adulthood gives the documentary the shape of a powerful coming-of-age story. As the years pass, we watch her navigate school, friendships and the complexities of growing up between Syrian traditions and the freedoms offered by life in Germany.
This tension is embodied most vividly by Israa’s father, whose behaviour often encapsulates the contradictions of exile. On one level, he clearly embraces the security and opportunities provided by a democratic European society. Yet within the family sphere, he frequently reproduces the conservative codes and expectations of the culture he left behind, revealing how migration rarely erases deeply rooted social structures. The resulting conflicts – particularly around gender roles and personal autonomy – form some of the documentary’s most compelling moments.
Generational trauma also looms large over the narrative. Through fragments of family history, the film hints at earlier cycles of repression and displacement, including the suggestion that Israa’s mother may herself have been forced into marriage at a young age.
Throughout, Simon Russell’s delicate instrumental score subtly punctuates the emotional rhythm of the story. Never overpowering the observational tone, the music instead underscores the film’s recurring themes of nostalgia, repression, loss and resilience, gently guiding the viewer through a history shaped by violence and exile.
One of the documentary’s most touching sequences arrives towards the end, when Israa – now an adult – returns to Syria alongside her mother, Sareen, and her husband, Mohammed. The visit takes place roughly ten years after the family’s departure and shortly after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, transforming the journey into a symbolic closing of a circle. The emotional weight of the return is palpable, as the characters confront the landscapes of a homeland that is at once familiar and irreversibly altered.
One in a Million poses two deceptively simple questions that resonate far beyond the story it tells: what does freedom truly mean, and what does democracy look like in the intimate space of a family? By allowing these issues to emerge organically through the lives of its protagonists, Azzam and MacInnes craft a documentary that is at once personal and political – a testament to how the grand narratives of migration and history are ultimately lived through individual lives.
One in a Million was produced by British outfit KEO Films.
