One in a Million

Produced by KEO Films for BBC Storyville and FRONTLINE FEATURES, filmed over 10 years, One in a Million follows Israa’s epic journey from Syria to Germany and back again. She and her family navigate war, exile, and heartbreak in a foreign land, revealing the complexities of the refugee experience.

In September 2015, filmmakers Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes met Israa, an 11-year-old Syrian girl selling cigarettes on a street corner in Turkey, alongside her father, Tarek. The family had fled Aleppo to join the largest movement of people since the Second World War. Together they trekked through Eastern Europe before finding refuge in Germany, where more than one million asylum seekers were registered by the end of that year.

For ten years, the filmmakers continued to document Israa’s life as the challenges of integration and cultural adjustment led to family breakdown as Western culture clashed with Syrian traditions. Following the fall of the Assad regime in 2025, the culminates when the filmmakers follow Israa, now a mother herself, back to the ruins of Aleppo as she confronts her own questions of identity and belonging.