‘Children were wearing fake life jackets’: one Syrian family’s terrifying, 10-year journey

In 2015, an 11-year-old Syrian girl called Israa matter-of-factly explained how her family would survive if their dinghy sank crossing the sea from Turkey to Greece. Her father would grab her disabled sister; her mother would look after the baby. “And I,” said Israa, a huge smile lighting her face, “I know how to rescue myself.”

Wife-and-husband documentary-makers Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes met Israa while filming a BBC series, Exodus, about refugees trying to reach Europe. Their plan was to follow Israa and her family on their hazardous journey to Germany. But after Israa reached safety, the pair kept filming. Ten years in the making, their documentary, One in a Million, is extraordinary - with echoes of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood and the Up! series. We watch Israa grow up in front of our eyes, from a sunny-natured 11-year-old to a woman, married with a baby of her own.

Azzam and MacInnes first spotted Israa in İzmir, on the Turkish coast, selling cigarettes with her father to raise money to pay the people-smugglers. “This ray of sunshine appeared in front of us,” remembers Azzam, who is also Syrian. “Israa was smiling and started talking to us. It was love at first sight. She was so bubbly, enthusiastic and positive. We were talking to her, then her father. They invited us back to their flat.” The family had fled Aleppo after their home was destroyed by a missile.

Eleven-year-old Israa joked about the dinghy sinking, too young to understand the risks. But her father Tarek agonised: “I’m gambling with the lives of my children,” he says in the documentary. Just a few months earlier, the body of the three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi washed ashore in Turkey. The image was in Tarek’s mind as he parted from the film-makers on the night of the crossing: “If anything bad happens to us, you have to tell our story.”

McInnes still finds the scene emotional to watch: “At the time we knew there was a chance that we would say goodbye to them, and that would be it.”

Sitting next to him in the restaurant of a London hotel, Azzam brushes aways tears as she remembers filming in İzmir, a hub for the people-smuggling trade. “It was absolutely heartbreaking. You saw lots of families putting life jackets on their children.” McInnes adds: “People were selling fake life jackets as well. Life jackets that didn’t actually work. I’m not sure we could have filmed it if we’d had children at that point.”

The couple met in 2010 while working together. Soon after, McInnes relocated to Damascus where they planned to start a production company. When the Syrian uprising began in 2011, they moved to London, where they now live with their six-year-old son.

In 2015, after Israa’s family landed in Greece on the dinghy, they joined the flow of refugees. It was Europe’s biggest movement of people since the second world war. Israa trudged through mud and freezing rain carrying her baby brother, while her parents pushed her sister in a wheelchair. Azzam and McInnes were there every step of the journey. “We slept in the street with them. We went on refugee trains and buses,” says McInnes. “By the time we arrived in Germany, we just became a family.”

The family’s journey ended in Cologne, where they settled. But the film-makers found it impossible to walk away. Partly it was about the relationship they had built, explains Azzam: “When we got to Germany, Israa was asking: ‘Are you going to visit us?’ We said: ‘Of course.’”

It also didn’t feel like the end of the story, she adds: “When we started, the idea was: let’s document this journey. Then there was a lot of talk about integration: will these people integrate in Europe? So we kept filming to cover that. Then it became a film about a family and love. Part of the emotional rollercoaster of making this film was that it’s about everything.”

In Cologne, Israa learned fluent German in five months flat. She started school, made friends and fell in love with Justin Bieber. Aged 12, she chose not to wear the hijab, a decision she later revisited. Her once close relationship with her father became antagonistic. One in a Million is a portrait of the refugee crisis, but it’s also a coming-of-age story, a tale about growing pains that feels universal in places.

It took Izzam and McInnes three years to get any kind of financial backing. They juggled full-time jobs, whacking the cost of making the documentary on to credit cards. How bad did it get? “I think we were at least 40 grand in debt at a one point,” McInnes replies grinning. “But we were young freelancers.”

In the documentary, we watch the tectonic plates in the family’s dynamics begin to move. When he left Syria, Tarek lost much of his identity. In Aleppo he ran a falafel restaurant: “He was a big character there,” says McInnes. “Everyone knew him. Now here he is in Germany, just another immigrant.”

While Tarek struggled to adjust, the women in his life blossomed. Halfway through the film his wife Nisreen – Israa’s mother – a background figure at the start, steps in front of the camera. Her transformation is one of the joys of the film. “She has a sort of hero’s journey, doesn’t she?” says MacInnes. “It’s so wonderful to see what’s happened to her.”

When Israa was 14, she disclosed to MacInnes that her father had been hitting her, while they were out picking up kebabs. He switched off the camera and into safeguarding mode: “We suddenly realised something much more important was happening than the film,” he remembers. With great sensitivity the film-makers chronicled what happened next in the family.

Their plan was to stop filming when Israa reached 18. But then she met her future husband Mohammed, who also arrived in Germany from Syria as a child refugee. In late 2024, the Assad regime unexpectedly fell. The film is bookended with moving footage of Israa returning to Aleppo to visit.

For those of us who have never experienced being a refugee, the film is a powerful insight into what it might feel like to have to leave your country and the longing for home. Azzam nods: “I went through that. It’s a struggle. Even though I’m settled in the UK and we have a child together and our life is here, there’s something missing. You feel like a guest that overstayed their welcome. And you struggle with identity. Who am I? Am I Syrian? Am I British?” She shrugs as if to say an answer is impossible.

Does anti-immigrant, anti-refugee feeling in the UK upset her? “It is hard, but you get used to it. There’s a lot of negativity, and you learn to block it.” The rhetoric is also a million miles from her her day-to-day life. “I’ve been in this country for 14 years, and I have never experienced any racism. I understand that people have. But honestly, it’s been an absolutely positive experience. And my parents have been here for a year. They are absolutely shocked at how nice people are. They don’t speak English, and when they walk down the street, everyone smiles at them, tries to help them.”

Azzam is from the Druze religious minority in Syria. Months after the fall of the Assad regime, armed tribes reportedly backed by the new government clashed with Druze fighters in southern Syria. Her village was destroyed: “we saw footage of our house, completely black, burned down.” Her parents have been in London for a year and a half.

Back to the film, Azzam admits there were times when they felt they would never finish it: “Honestly, it was really intense to make. It was just out of passion really that carried on for so long.”

She exchanges a glance with MacInnes. He adds: “ I remember when Israa was first in Germany, we used to push her on the swings. Now we push our kids together on the swings.”

Over a video call, I speak to Israa, sitting in the kitchen of her home outside Cologne. She smiles easily and often. Now in her early 20s, with two small children, she has returned to education and is training to be a civil servant in local government.

Does she remember meeting the film-makers? “Yes!” she says with one of her biggest, brightest smiles. “I felt a blind trust from the moment I saw Itab, I trusted her straight away. And our relationship over the years turned into a really deep friendship.”

The first time she watched One in a Million, she cried all the way through, she says. How did it feel watching scenes of her family prepare to make the crossing from Turkey? “As a child I wasn’t really aware how dangerous it was. But now, when I remember, when I watch the movie, I can see it was a really dangerous trip.”

I ask if becoming a mother has changed how she feels about the trek she took so young? She nods. “I always say that both of my parents are very brave. Because now as a mother when I look at my children, I say that I would never have the courage to do to take such a trip. I am very proud of them because they took this decision and went on this journey with us.”