A Thousand and One

We have seen dozens of stories about single mothers who overcome adversity, but the narrative here makes it feel new again as we feel Inez's tough decisions ...

Without turning it into a genre piece, the decision that Inez makes and the secret that Terry has to hide creates a symbolic urgency to their relationship. The final scenes are manipulative in a fashion that the movie otherwise defies for most of its runtime. Even as the film falters narratively, she’s a force of nature embodying a person more than just playing a role. It gives her arc the tenor of a survival story by making her the rock-solid center of a world that spins around her. Every mother worries their son could be taken away by violence or tragedy, but Inez has to raise her boy in a world where that threat is more immediate. [Aaron Kingsley Adetola](/cast-and-crew/aaron-kingsley-adetola), [Aven Courtney](/cast-and-crew/aven-courtney), and [Josiah Cross](/cast-and-crew/josiah-cross) at 6, 13, and 17, respectively), but he’s been in the foster system while Inez was behind bars.

This year's Sundance grand jury prize winner, A.V. Rockwell's "A Thousand and One," features a riveting performance by Teyana Taylor.

[Vulture, Alison Willmore](https://www.vulture.com/article/walk-up-review-the-joys-of-never-leaving-the-house.html) wrote, “For all of ‘Walk Up’s’ delicious skewering of Byung-soo’s vanity and dread, the film is fueled by an awareness of the precarity of being an artist and the need to earn money that affects all the characters. … For a film about collaboration, the actors aren’t in tonal agreement about the movie they’re in. The film is in theaters now. [Brian Contreras took a look](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-03-31/with-the-d-d-movie-has-hollywood-finally-cracked-the-code-for-gaming-adaptations) at the long road of bringing a Dungeons and Dragons movie back to the screen after previous failed attempts. Daley added, “That sense of heartfelt-ness and the lack of cynicism was really important to us. With a cast that includes Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis and Hugh Grant, the story finds a band of adventurers coming together for a quest of shifting goals. [Deadline, Valerie Complex](https://deadline.com/2023/01/a-thousand-and-one-sundance-film-festival-review-teyana-taylor-1235224213/) wrote, “‘A Thousand and One’ is a character study that focuses on individuals looking for redemption, and consistency, but poverty and crime prevent them from reaching that goal. Yet you don’t have to view them cumulatively to realize that every single one of these lives matter and every single one of these stories count.” [the Playlist, Robert Daniels](https://theplaylist.net/a-thousand-and-one-review-black-motherhood-and-harlem-take-centerstage-in-a-v-rockwells-handsome-debut-sundance-20230125/) wrote, “While ‘A Thousand and One’ is a breathtakingly beautiful portrait of Black womanhood and is thoughtfully political, the character beats heave with a noticeable unevenness. [the New York Times, Manohla Dargis](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/movies/a-thousand-and-one-review.html) wrote, “What interests Rockwell are the lives in the apartments and how these lives joyfully and chaotically flow back and forth into the streets, pumping energy into the city, enlivening and sustaining it. ... New York became the mecca under that grid when it was a place that was designed for people to experience. Two of my favorite (realtively) recent horror movies will play as a double bill at

Teyana Taylor delivers an astonishing performance in filmmaker A.V. Rockwell's feature debut, a fascinating portrait of fierce maternal instincts on the ...

“A Thousand and One” is a fascinating portrait of the maternal, feminine instinct caught in an unforgiving world. Yue also employs pans and zooms that harken back to the New Hollywood films of the 1970s, placing this film in a long lineage of gritty New York City indie filmmaking. During a climactic conversation between Terry and Inez, all color has been drained from the image, the two pictured in stark contrast to the white walls. Her character, Inez, is on the offense as her only form of defense, a stance and ethos that never wavers throughout the years we follow her. It’s 1994 and we meet the incarcerated Inez in a tender moment: gently applying makeup to another female inmate. dramatic grand jury prize](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-01-27/sundance-film-festival-2023-prizes-a-thousand-and-one-going-to-mars) at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, casts the harrowing story of a mother and her son against the backdrop of a gentrifying Harlem.

A Thousand and One tackles many themes, and a lot of them have to do with New York City. The film, directed by A.V. Rockwell in her feature debut, ...

“It had to try to become a lot more like everywhere else, and I feel like that in so many ways, that is the journey of Black women. It was a lot for us to take in and it was even emotional for us to have to rebuild out the sweet spots in Harlem. “I saw parallels in the story of New York and the way it lost a sense of personality,” said Rockwell. So to go back home, of course, I was excited to like see my friends and go to all my favorite food spots and [I’d] see that a lot of it had been erased on top of the seasoning salt that was on there. I’m a New York City kid who loves it through and through, and so, it’s like, how do I feel about the fact that the city feels like we were being targeted…it’s like the city doesn’t love me. I think [it was] seeing gentrification firsthand and how that was reshaping New York in a way that it felt like Black communities were being pushed out altogether and being erased.

The winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize is at 97% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes, 82% with auds. The fest called it “an elegant ode to the terribly ...

Deadline review [here](https://deadline.com/2022/02/berlin-review-ursula-meiers-the-line-1234931687/). Premiered at the Cannes [Directors’ Fortnight](https://deadline.com/tag/directors-fortnight/) last year, Deadline review [here](https://deadline.com/2022/05/enys-men-cannes-review-mark-jenkin-1235028906/). [Aviva Kempner](https://deadline.com/tag/aviva-kempner/)’s latest documentary Imagining The Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting, directed with Ben West, at NYC’s Quad Cinema. [The Line](https://deadline.com/tag/the-line/) opens for a one-week NY theatrical engagement at the Metrograph. No longer allowed to contact her mother ( [Valeria Bruni Tedeschi](https://deadline.com/tag/valeria-bruni-tedeschi/)) or approach the family home, she returns every day to the invisible and impassable frontier. Goldberg, The Spy Behind Home Plate) Fri/Sat/Sun). The Horror Collective presents Summoning Sylvia opening on about 25 screens in LA, NY, Dallas, Chicago, Santa Barbara, Memphis, Columbus, Cincinnati, Phoenix and Detroit. A daughter tracks down her estranged father, now living in the Oregon wilderness obsessed with UFOs, and together they attempt to make first contact. Magnolia released the absurdist director’s Mandibles (2021) and Rubber (2010). In Viaggio by Gianfranco Rosi (Fire at Sea, Notturno) is a decade-long chronicling of the head of the Catholic church. [Enys Men](https://deadline.com/tag/enys-men/), written and directed by Mark Jenkin (Bait), starring Mary Woodvine, in 62 theaters. Holding onto their secret and each other, mother and son set out to reclaim their sense of home, identity, and stability in a rapidly changing New York City.