![]() ![]() ![]() But the lived-in quality of the material makes this story feel so real, and almost stranger than fiction at times. ![]() The story of Terry and Inez and, later, Lucky ( William Catlett), her boyfriend who becomes a father figure for Terry, is a simple one. 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. Her swift, confident movements are captured in snippets of grainy, handheld images. Soon, she’s released back on the streets of Harlem, hawking her services as a hairstylist and desperately trying to stay out of the shelter. It’s 1994 and we meet the incarcerated Inez in a tender moment: gently applying makeup to another female inmate. Sweeping aerial shots set to soulful strings introduce us to the iconography of New York City: the Empire State Building, Central Park and, of course, Rikers Island, holding New York City’s largest jail. 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. “A Thousand and One” proves to be a showcase for multihyphenate star and Harlem native Teyana Taylor, who brings to her astonishing performance the coiled physicality of a panther ready to pounce. dramatic grand jury prize at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, casts the harrowing story of a mother and her son against the backdrop of a gentrifying Harlem. But secrets fester, grow bigger and inevitably burst with the resonance of truth, as they do in “A Thousand and One,” the debut feature of writer/director A.V. Mothers are often the keepers of secrets, borne from a primal instinct for survival. ![]()
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