The Double Journey of a Young Refugee

Sometimes the hardest part of war is what comes after. That’s according to Israa, the Syrian refugee at the center of Jack MacInnes and Itab Azzam’s new documentary, “One in a Million.” The film follows Israa for 10 years, from adolescence into adulthood. Over the course of a decade, we accompany her during the intimate drama of her childhood assimilation into German society, and her eventual return to her homeland as a woman and a mother.

The documentary opens by cutting from the adult Israa to sit-down segments of her when she was 11. Her physical and psychological journeys began with an arduous dinghy trip from Turkey to the shores of Greece, shot at an observational distance. Israa’s family — her parents, her baby brother and her disabled sister — face rejections at several Balkan borders before being allowed to settle in Cologne, Germany, where the real drama begins.

As much as the film is about the refugee journey — one that could’ve easily gone wrong for its subjects — its main thematic focus is emotional displacement and assimilation. This is captured in interviews, impromptu moments and everyday gatherings. But more intriguing is what the movie doesn’t or can’t capture. Several major developments unfold out of frame, such as the parents’ deteriorating marriage and eventual divorce. Limited access to the family unit results in what feels like holes in its core conceit, despite the breadth of its ambition. It’s a film that knocks on its subjects’ doors but is ultimately shut out.

Amid domestic drama, the roving camera becomes a confidant for Israa, a friend in whom she confides about things she doesn’t want her strict father to know: a boy she meets, her desire to speak German. All the while, her coming-of-age and her complicated relationship to her Muslim religion (she goes back and forth over when and where to don a hijab) remain central, even as the world around her speeds up — numerous scenes find her father wandering through protests against the rise of Germany’s right-wing AfD party and growing anti-refugee sentiment. 

“One in a Million” doesn’t address this far-right discourse head-on, but instead provides an implicit rejoinder by humanizing its subjects no matter their transgressions. Israa, although she initially chooses to assimilate, eventually finds comfort in traditions which isolate her from her German peers. Even her father, a man guilty of harming his wife and daughter, is portrayed in all his vivid emotional dimensions until he eventually expresses remorse. 

As the political demand for perfect victimhood hovers just outside the frame, the movie’s plea for plurality proves all-encompassing. The story, ultimately, isn’t about where we find ourselves, ethically or emotionally, at a single point in time. It’s about the transformational journey that time itself affords us, even when we are forced to build a home away from home.