One in a Million: Film Screening and Q&A

Join us for a screening of Frontline’s new award-winning documentary One in a Million. Filmed over 10 years, it 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. After the film, producer and Frontline Editor-In-Chief Rainey Aronson-Rath will speak with Berkeley Journalism’s Jason Spingarn-Coff and take questions. Snacks will be served in the lobby before the event.  RSVP HERE. 

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.

The film is a Sundance Winner for both the ‘Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary’ and the ‘World Cinema Documentary Directing Award’.