A DECADE OF FILMING ONE SYRIAN GIRL, FROM AGE 11 TO 21, IS NOW AN OSCAR CONTENDER
The filmmakers were living in Damascus in 2011 and left for London expecting to return in months. They met Israa selling cigarettes in Turkey in 2015, and never stopped filming.
🔴 Ten years of filming. One girl. From age 11 to 21.
Deadline reports that One in a Million, the Oscar-contending documentary that won two awards at Sundance including the directing prize, has released its first trailer ahead of a theatrical run in October.
The origin story is the part that sticks. Co-directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes were living in Damascus in 2011 when Syria's civil war broke out. They left for London in August of that year expecting to return within months. That day, they write, never came.
Four years later, in 2015, they met Israa selling cigarettes on a street corner in Turkey. Her family had just arrived from the devastation of Aleppo. They decided to stay in her life.
What followed: the Mediterranean crossing in an inflatable raft, a mooring on the Greek island of Samos, a brutal journey on foot through Eastern Europe, and finally Germany, where Israa became one of a million Syrian refugees the country admitted.
After the fall of the Assad regime, the film turns to a different question. Israa can weigh returning home, against the opportunities Germany gave her.
The money behind it is institutional documentary money: Frontline Features, PBS Distribution and BBC Storyville, with Oscar winner Raney Aronson-Rath of 20 Days in Mariupol among the producers.
Would you go back?
#OneInAMillion #Documentary #Oscars #Sundance #causeanuproar
First reported by
Deadline
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