A Thousand and One

A Thousand and One is a 2023 American drama film, written and directed by A.V. Rockwell. The film stars Teyana Taylor, Will Catlett, Josiah Cross, Aven Courtney and Aaron Kingsley Adetola. Set in the 1990s and 2000s, it follows a single mother who decides to kidnap her son out of the foster care system to raise him herself, as the two struggle with life in a constantly changing New York City. It had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2023, and won the Grand Jury Prize. It was released on March 31, 2023, by Focus Features. Plot In 1994, hairdresser and convicted thief Inez de la Paz is released from Rikers Island and returns to the Brooklyn neighborhood of her former shelter, where she sees her son Terry with other children from his foster home out on the street. When Terry is hospitalized after trying to escape from the home, Inez secretly visits him. He tells her about his earliest memory: of Inez abandoning him on a street corner when he was two years old. Inez notifies Terry that they will lose contact again when he is placed at a new foster home. Visibly shaken after he accuses her of repeated abandonment, Inez asks if Terry wants to come live with her. When he says yes, Inez impulsively abducts him from the hospital, escaping to her childhood neighborhood of Harlem. Inez and Terry stay at a variety of homes until she saves up enough money from a new job at a nursing home to afford an apartment. During conversation with Ms. Annie, whom Inez rents a room from for a short period of time, it's implied that Inez lost her own parents during the crack epidemic. She arranges a false birth certificate and social security card for Terry so that she can enroll him in school, and reunites with an old boyfriend and fellow thief named Lucky. Though seemingly uncomfortable with the situation, he and Inez get married and he promises to take care of Terry. Both Inez and Lucky invest in the new Mayor Giuliani's promise of an improved city, in hopes that it will offer a better upbringing for Terry than their own. Harlem continues to change despite highly reported cases of police brutality throughout the city, culminating with the Guiliani's rollout of stop-and-frisk. By 2001, Inez still lives in the same apartment with Terry though her marriage to Lucky has become strained due to his long absences and infidelities.