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A Thousand and Oneis a touching story of a mother and a son in New York City, fighting all the odds. Released in, 2023 the drama has blown people away with its well-written story and stellar cast. The film is A.V. Rockwell’s directorial debut, set in the 1990s and early 2000s in New York. It covers all the ups and downsof living in New York, especially as people of color — from the flawed foster care system to the difficulty of just getting by in the city.
The main character, Inez (Teyana Taylor), is a mother who goes to great lengths to protect and provide for her son, Terry, whom she takes from the foster care system to give him a better life. Then, their journey begins — a roller coaster filled with trauma, heartbreak, family love, and racism.A Thousand and Oneis so impressive in its ability to be both heartwarming and heartbreaking.
Inez, her son Terry, and her boyfriend Lucky (Willian Catlett) soon start anew as a family. Their ups and downs bring out the best and worst in each character as they each evolve over time. It’s no wonder that the film has earned a Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival — it’s incredibly well made.
What Happens In A Thousand and One
The family starts when Inez is at her lowest, trying to rebuild her life after getting out of prison. The young woman is quickly honing her hairdressing skills and trying to make ends meet. Her priorities change when she sees a 6-year-old Terry, a child bitter from the heavily flawed foster care system, and decides to (falsely) confess to him that he is her son. Trying to save him from the dark hole that the foster care system is (and the system she knows all too well), she takes him under her wing.
Though what Inez does is technically illegal, the flawed and underfunded system isn’t bothered by one Black boy going missing, which works in Terry and Inez’s favor. Their journey then begins as Inez works multiple jobs to support both of them, and they eventually move in and start a family with Inez’s boyfriend, Lucky. It’s by no means easy; the emotional, physical, and financial toll of a young family going through rough patches together can make or break people.
In their case, it breaks the once-happy couple. Their previously stable life is starting to crumble, as Lucky now cheats on his wife and abandons his son, and on top of that, their landlord’s inappropriate behavior drives them out of their apartment. After living under the threats of unemployment, homelessness, and starvation, Inez and her family are constantly faced with steeper hills to climb — what feels like a thousand and one problems await them.
What Happens to Lucky
Unfortunately for Lucky, his ending involves a slow battle with cancer that he eventually loses. Despite his cheating on her, Inez tries to honor him and not take bad memories of him with her after he dies. She tries to be reasonable to the woman he cheated on her with by inviting her to his funeral and letting her mourn Lucky. Her actions show how much the little family she had meant to her despite being hit with painful reality over and over again.
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Though Lucky was never a perfect husband and father to his family, in reality, he was fighting with his own demons as everything else was unfolding. On his deathbed, he told Inez that he never accepted and loved himself, which made it difficult for him to love her fully. This confession gives a reason to make more sense of Lucky’s infidelity, although it does not justify it. No one is perfect, and the characters in this film are far from it — but that’s what makes them all the more interesting.
Inez and Terry’s Ending
Read Our Interview With Teyana Taylor and A.V. RockwellA Thousand and Oneends with Inez and Terry parting ways after the truth that Inez is not his biological mother has been revealed. Following Lucky’s death due to cancer, the two drift apart — Terry blaming Inez for taking his one and only father figure away. The grief, accompanied by the financial burden that lurks over their shoulders, pushes them further from one another.
As if the internal force isn’t enough hurdle for them, the foster care system comes back to bite them. As Terry tries to get a job to help his mother keep their apartment, his papers raise suspicion, and the truth of his origin is revealed.
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The social services investigate and learn that Inez isn’t Terry’s biological mother. Inez, after being warned by Terry that the authorities are coming, runs and leaves Terry alone to sit through the truth being explained to him. Terry is understandably angered and disappointed, and no matter how much Inez explains, nothing justifies her feeding him lies all his life.
Terry and Inez then part ways, which is a reasonable path for both. That way, Inez doesn’t get arrested for kidnapping him, and Terry gets to have his papers fixed and build a life for himself. Inez knows that the intelligent boy can make a life for himself, and believes that he’s better off without her.
The Meaning of A Thousand and One
Centered on found family,A Thousand and Oneis a film that explores the real struggles one may face as a victim of a profoundly broken system. Inez, Terry, and Lucky may not have the best journey as a found family, but their bond is nevertheless still as strong as, if not more than, ifthey were a family tied by blood.
Inez’s relationship with Terry hasn’t always been the best, either. The young boy, at times, feels abandoned, because he was. While this isn’t easy to fix, Inez tries her best to set Terry up for a better future — some argue this justifies her kidnapping him when he was a kid. Without her interfering, he would’ve stayed in the foster care system, bouncing from one foster house to another and not able to dig into his potential as he had with Inez.
The director, A.V. Rockwell, stated that she intended to makeA Thousand and Onea film about a difficult anddramatic family dynamicin a city they love deeply, but it doesn’t reciprocate. In aninterview with Filmmaker Magazine, Rockwell says that the point ofA Thousand and Oneis to show “how hard it is to keep Black families together, and the different things that try to rip us apart.” Through Inez, Terry, and Lucky, that message is expertly translated to the screen, with each character experiencing a very difficult reality with hope at its core.
