13/11/2026

LYFE FRIDAY | NOV 13, 2026 25 One in a Million follows Syrian refugee girl’s journey over 10 years ISRAA was 11 years old and selling cigarettes with her father on a street corner in Turkiye when filmmakers Jack MacInnes and Itab Azzam met the Syrian refugee in 2015. They were charmed by the bubbly young girl and wanted to tell her story as her family, who had fled war-ravaged Aleppo, journeyed across eight countries to settle in Germany. “We were with them the whole time... we slept with them... in the street, in the rain. We were, like, in freezing conditions in Serbia and Croatia... And by the time we arrived in Germany, it was like we became like a family and we really bonded,” Azzam told Reuters. That was when the idea came about for One in a Million , the couple’s documentary filmed over 10 years following Israa to adulthood. The intimate coming-of-age story shows Israa and her family crossing borders and adapting in Germany, where new-found freedoms jar with old traditions. Viewers follow Israa into adolescence, marriage and motherhood as she seeks to find herself amid fracturing shifts at home. A married Israa eventually returns to visit Syria with her husband after the 2024 overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. “Migration... (has) become such a sort of political football that has so much to do with the way we feel about each other and the way we feel about our own country and has so little to do with what it’s actually like to be a refugee. “And what we hope is that you can watch this film and walk for an hour and a half in a refugee’s shoes and understand the complexity of it,” MacInnes said. One in a Million , which opened in UK cinemas recently, premiered at January’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award. “We... brought Israa out as a surprise and the place just went wild. “It was so emotional for us to see this girl... who we’d met 11 years previously... selling cigarettes on a street corner, being beaten up by police, no one gave a damn about her. And... suddenly, here she is getting her moment,” MacInnes said.

Malcolm McDowell turns new page with love for reading

B RITISH actor Malcolm McDowell has spent more than six decades playing rebels, villains, outsiders and authority figures. At 83, he has never seriously considered retiring and his latest role feels unusually personal. In Last Train to Fortune , now available on streaming platforms, McDowell plays Cecil Peachtree, a schoolmaster who believes books can open minds and change lives. The character’s faith in literature and education struck a chord with the actor, who traces much of his own career back to a teacher who transformed the way he saw the world. “I wouldn’t have been an actor without this man,” McDowell said, recalling a boarding school headmaster who introduced him to Shakespeare, took pupils to watch Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud perform, and encouraged his growing interest in theatre. “He inspired me absolutely to be an actor.” A life shaped by curiosity His latest film centres on Cecil’s efforts to share his love of books, a theme McDowell embraced eagerly. Long before becoming known for roles in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange , and dozens of films and television series that followed, he was an enthusiastic reader. “Books are the most wonderful places to escape to,” he told Reuters, recalling stories that carried him thousands of miles from his own life. McDowell acknowledges that reading occupies a different place in modern life. But rather than look back, he returns to a different idea. “Being curious is the cornerstone to intelligence,” he said, arguing that curiosity o Clockwork Orange star’s life comes full circle with book-loving teacher role US actor John Malkovich has close, longtime friends, but unlike his character Chris in the new dark comedy Wild Horse Nine , he thinks there are limits on what one can ask them to do. Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Martin McDonagh, the movie follows two CIA spies in the lead-up to the US-backed 1973 coup in Chile. As the spies – played by 72-year-old Malkovich and Oscar winner Sam Rockwell – visit Easter Island against a tense

McDowell is an avid reader who finds escapism via books. – PICS FROM IMDB

In Last Train to Fortune , McDowell plays a schoolmaster who believes in the power of reading.

“I know that I’ve led the most privileged life doing something that I totally love,” he said. For McDowell, that enthusiasm is closely tied to the message at the heart of Last Train to Fortune.

underpins everything from reading and travel to art and education. “We wouldn’t have moved on as a human race if there hadn’t been great curiosity.” Asked what question he finds himself asking more often with age, McDowell paused: “What’s it all been about? What the hell is it?” Yet, there is little sense of regret.

“If just a kid sees this movie and says: ‘You know what? I’d like to read a Charles Dickens story,’ then I think it’s all worthwhile.” John Malkovich wonders if friends would take his life

sociopolitical backdrop, veteran agent Chris asks his partner to end his life as he knows his days are numbered. “I think asking a friend to take your life is about as big an ask as one can make,” Malkovich told a news conference in Los Angeles recently. “I wouldn’t do it,” he added, laughing. Malkovich described the rapport between the characters: “They argue about odd things... whether they should kill people while they’re

eating or how gay is cheese in various countries.” The actor, who has been nominated for an Academy Award twice but never won, has generated significant Oscar buzz for his performance in Wild Horse Nine , especially after winning the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Malkovich said he was drawn to the project by McDonagh’s script. “He’s a terrific writer of dialogue. He’s a terrific writer of writing about men, I think, and their various complications... their relationships with themselves and with other men, their need for other men in their lives and their rejection of that need,” Malkovich said. Playwright and director McDonagh has been nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars three times, most recently for 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin. Steve Buscemi, who plays the CIA’s Latin American bureau chief in Wild Horse Nine , said the film hinges on the characters, rather than the plot. “The story really is the relationships and what these characters have to do, what they ask of each other, how they relate to each other,” he told the news conference. – AFP

The film follows a Syrian girl’s decade-long journey to Germany and back. – IMDBPIC

Malkovich (left) and Rockwell play CIA agents holidaying on Easter Island. – IMDBPIC