Since times of enslavement, it’s been up to Black women to piece together homes for their children— homes often made out of nothing but full of love. A.V. Rockwell’s profound debut feature, A Thousand and One, centers on 22-year-old Inez (an outstanding Teyana Taylor). Set in the early ’90s, Inez has been recently released from prison and thrust back onto the streets of Brooklyn. Determined to stop the scheming that got her incarcerated, she tries to restore her relationship with her timid 6-year-old son Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola). After being abandoned on the street corner and pushed into the foster care system, Terry is initially distrustful of his mother. However, after he has an accident in his group home and lands in the hospital, the aspiring hairstylist decides to kidnap her son out of the foster care system, determined to give him the home she never had growing up.
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