With different subjects and geographical locations, three Sundance Film Festival documentaries are masterfully crafted contemplations of our greatest contemporary moral and ethical responsibilities, when considered together.
ONE IN A MILLION
One In A Million (directed by Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes) is an exceptional documentary. The documentary chronicles the experiences of Isra’a from her preteen years in Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War to her family’s escape and eventual settlement in Cologne, Germany and most recently as a married woman and mother who is able to visit Aleppo once again after the Assad regime fell.
Over a ten-year period, the stories are told entirely by Israa and her family members. One in a Million is a paragon exemplifying the documentary form as a powerful source of journalism. As in Gaza, Yemen and Iraq, the Western media has framed the casualties of the Syrian War and the enormous numbers of refugees (more than 13 million Syrians were displaced before the Bashar al-Assad regime collapsed in late 2024).
In their directors’ statement, Azzam and MacInnes wrote, “When the war started in Syria in 2011 we were a new couple living in Damascus, Syria, the country of Itab’s birth. We left for London in August of that year planning to return a few months later, but that day never came. They added, “Four years later in 2015, we met Israa selling cigarettes on a street corner in Turkey, as she and her family had just arrived from the devastation of Aleppo. Defiant and brimming with joy, despite the horror around her, we instantly fell in love with her – and felt that her story demanded telling.”
The film follows through exquisitely on its creative brief, as Azzam and MacInnes explained, “The media was, and remains, full of speculation as to the probable success of large scale immigration in the long term, with public opinion divided predictably on political lines. But we felt we were witnessing the truth first hand and that the answers would only start to reveal themselves after a considerable period of time. We were Israa’s only constant presence beyond her family from her time in Turkey and we knew we wanted to stay in her life. That was when the idea for One in a Million was born.
In Germany, which houses the largest number of Syrians outside of the Middle East, Isra’a’s family undergoes dramatic changes. Her parents split, as the mother experiences a new sense of liberation while the father struggles to find his own identity and his purpose in Cologne. Meanwhile, Isra’a is motivated and resilient. She finds the love of her life and becomes a mother. Near the end of the film, she travels with her new family to Aleppo after the old regime fell. One wonders if her young family will return to Syria. There is great uncertainty.
In fact, one very recent study showed that while many Syrian refugees still expressed their emotional attachment to Germany, many indicated that their symbolic and affective connection to Syria has been rejuvenated. Even as there is a revived sense of emotional pride, many did not indicate that they were disillusioned with living in Germany. Indeed, we see many scenes that signal how becoming socially embedded in a new settlement home is important to refugees who don’t want to risk any unforeseen consequences that emigration might seem. In fact, very few Syrians indicated they had made concrete plans to return to their native land.
One in a Million instructs the viewer to avoid making simplistic assumptions about refugees, their emotional attachments and intentions as geopolitical events change. The documentary is a penetrating case study rendered in epic storytelling that reminds us that refugees are not statistical aggregates of a civil war’s collateral damage but that individually, their lives entail a complex process shaped by their emotional ties, legal realities and the constraints of social structures. The film won two awards in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary category for directing and as the audience favorite.
KIKUYU LAND
Kikuyu Land (directors and producers: Andrew H. Brown, Bea Wangondu, producers: Moses Bwayo, Mike Morrisroe, Joseph Njenga) is a riveting documentary. Wangondu is a journalist based in Nairobi, who is investigating not only the newly elected Kenyan president’s moves to undercut the legitimacy of the National Land Commission’s efforts to secure land tenure for Kenyans but also the abuses of workers on tea plantations owned and operated by Western corporate interests.
Along the way, she discovers a shocking secret about her grandfather, his ties to colonial inetrests and the impact it has on comprehending the significance of land for individual legacy and cultural identity. In their directors’ statement, Brown and Wangondu noted, “For generations, the Kikuyu people have fought to protect their land, culture, and future. Much of this history has been told through outside perspectives. Kikuyu Land reclaims voice and agency, centering those directly affected by colonial policies and ongoing structures of power. By amplifying these lived experiences, the film is both historically rigorous and emotionally resonant while highlighting how similar systems of exploitation impact communities worldwide.”
The heart of Kikuyu Land’s story is told through the perspective of Stephen, a teenager who lives on a tea plantation. He offers one of the film’s most incisive lines that encapsulates the intertwined themes explored in the documentary: “I think everyone has two stories — one that the world sees and one that they keep to themselves.” The line reverberates with a similar sentiment that emerged in another Sundance documentary about Kenya that premiered last year: How to Build A Library. As The Utah Review noted last year, the concerns about ‘forget and move on’ are always close by in How to Build A Library. As Syokau Mutonga and Angela Okune wrote in a published chapter for a book in 2021: “An approach of ‘forget and move on’ towards Kenyan national events has led to the normalisation of state incompetence and a distrust of its narratives and systems, fertile grounds for technology corporations to offer their ‘free’ services.” They later expanded on the point: “ A culture of ‘forget and move on’ has had debilitating effects not only on national memory but also on the actors seen as trustworthy and capable of managing and stewarding Kenya’s past, present and future.”
Stephen’s coming-of-age coincides with the presidency of William Ruto, who has become one of the most despised and corrupt politicians in Kenya’s post-colonial history. As Wangondu discovers, violence against journalists has accelerated at an alarming rate, with many being killed. Huge throngs of young people have protested in the streets, demanding his resignation, to which the government has responded with violence. Protestors have referred to Ruto as Zakayo, the biblical tax collector Zacchaeus while others call him mwizi, which is Kiswahili for thief.
Kikuyu Land is essential for serious viewers looking for thoroughly investigated dives into the undercurrents of post colonial African politics.
SEIZED
After viewing Seized (director and producer: Sharon Liese, with producers Sasha Alpert, Paul Matyasovsky), one can dream that every independent local newspaper in the U.S. has a journalist and editor like Eric Meyer. Seized puts the emphatic punctuation point on why independent local journalism remains the cornerstone of the constitutional protections of the freedom of the press.
With a level of detail that would make old-school editors-in-chief and managing editors smile proudly, the film chronicles how the small town of Marion, Kansas became famous internationally after a police raid on the Marion County Record newspaper. The story took flight around the globe on the day after, especially after news broke that Meyer’s mother, Joan, 98, who co-owned the paper with her son, died on the day following the raid. The film includes bodycam footage of the mother standing up from her walker, protesting the raid with the defiance that any genuine defender of the freedom of the press would display.
The August 11, 2023 raid was carried out after news stories were published about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving. Last November, the county agreed to pay a cumulative $3 million to three journalists and a city councilor. Litigation continues, as reported in the Kansas Reflector, “The county was a secondary player in the raids… but the agreements could play a part in the paper’s ongoing cases against the city.”
For a citizenry which, unfortunately, has lacked the gravity of media literacy to comprehend why stories such as these deserve to be as visible as possible, Seized is a treasured explainer. Marion, Kansas is a microcosm of the inept, corrupt, and incompetent political leadership which beleaguers this entire nation. It also is a lesson about law enforcement officers whose poor training has made them oblivious to the dangerously unconstitutional consequences of their actions im uniform. One of the most intriguing aspects comes through the experiences of Finn Hartnett, a New York City transplant who lands his first job as a newspaper reporter in Marion. We see Meyer as a mentor, hoping to shape a young journalist to understand that his vocation has always been intended to be aggressive and not deferent to community PR-driven perceptions.
The film validates what an article in Columbia Journalism Review suggested a month after the 2023 raid. Noting that it was a “clear case of official retaliation against a local newspaper,” the article also highlights the other key narrative shown in Seized. That is, Meyer and his staff asked for trouble because of their aggressive reporting about Marion, a point that was made as well in The New York Times and many others. The CJR point echoes loudly in Seized:
If that debate is actually happening, it’s not because newspapers like the Record are crossing the line by agitating small-town officials. It’s because those officials have grown unaccustomed to healthy scrutiny. And perhaps some of their constituents have forgotten the benefits of a robust Fourth Estate.
Meyer and his mother purchased the newspaper more than 25 years ago, to ensure it could sustain its journalistic independence rather than become a chain-owned publication. In 2004, there were more than 9,000 newspapers and just before the pandemic, the number declined by nearly one-fourth. We talk about food deserts but there also are news deserts. The Marion, Kansas officials don’t believe newspapers should by junkyard dogs protecting the freedom of the press.in Seized, we hear plenty of comments lamenting the paper’s lack of coverage about what is positive in the town. It was ironic to hear the words of the disgraced former police chief in the film. As CJR noted,
Cody agreed with the store owner. He told the Post, “If you live in Marion, you understand. If you don’t live in Marion, you don’t understand.” (Cody has lived in Marion for five months.) By the time that comment was published, the Kansas City Star had revealed that Cody resigned from his prior position in Kansas City, Missouri, earlier this year to avoid a demotion. The Record then reported on the laundry list of complaints against Cody that it received—but did not publish—at the time he was hired.
The truth is that as aggressive a journalist as Meyer has appeared to be, the editor also was scrupulous about making sure that he had everything right. It was heartening to hear a few of the town’s 12,000 residents talk positively about the newspaper’s mission because they do not travel in the tightly concentrated bubbles of elite townspeople who prefer to call the shots without any external scrutiny.
Seized demonstrates how small-town governments count on intimidating tactics to force their local newspapers to fold, especially when one realizes that running an independent newspaper is barely capable of being a profitable venture. We can thank the divine powers that Meyer had the courage and skill to stir things up for the benefit of the townspeople who deserve a functioning local government that should always be vigilant to its ethical responsibilities.