A Thousand and One begins in 1994, shortly before a 22-year-old woman named Inez is released from Rikers Island. We don’t know much about her, but Teyana Taylor, the electrifying actor who plays her, tells us plenty just from the brashly confident way Inez strides through her old Brooklyn stomping grounds after a year away.
As she greets old friends and looks for work as a hairdresser, Inez is determined to put the past behind her — though that becomes impossible when she runs into her 6-year-old son, Terry, on the street. Terry was sent to foster care when Inez went to prison, and while he resents her for leaving him, he’d clearly rather be with her again than in his current situation.
And so when Terry has an accident at home, Inez impulsively springs him from the hospital and takes him to the Harlem neighborhood where she grew up. They lie low for a while, though it soon becomes sadly clear that nobody’s really looking for Terry, who’s just one of many kids who’ve slipped through the cracks of the foster-care system. Inez grew up in that system herself, and she wants to give Terry the loving home she never had.
Soon she finds them a rundown Harlem apartment — the number on the door, 10-01, is one explanation for the movie’s title. Over the next several years, this apartment will be their home, but it’s a precarious one, where every happy moment feels both fleeting and hard-won.
Inez works long hours to provide for herself and Terry, a gifted student whose teachers think he could be Ivy League material. Eventually, Inez marries Lucky, an old boyfriend played by a charismatic William Catlett. While not the most faithful husband, Lucky becomes a genuinely loving father figure to Terry.
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