Our natural superlative for great acting is that it’s worthy of an Oscar which is a shame, because the performance Teyana Taylor gives in A Thousand and One is of a type that the Oscars rarely notice. The role of Inez, a born-and-bred New Yorker who, when the fiilm starts, is fresh from prison on Rikers Island and searching for her son, Terry,  doesn’t involve the currently fashionable elaborate physical transformation or the channelling of a well-known historical figure. Inez, who learned early on to approach the world with her fists raised, can erupt into anger, but A Thousand and One’s most momentous developments — like Inez’s decision to grab Terry out of foster care in Brooklyn and whisk him away to Harlem, where she grew up — unfold in a quiet fashion that does not lend itself to awards reels. But there’s a majesty to the character, and to how intensely Taylor inhabits her, that has nothing to do with speeches and everything to do with watching life leave its marks on her in real time

Following Inez and son Terry from 1994, when Inez is 22, through to 2005,when Terry is 17 , the film’s a thoughtful study of Black motherhood and Black boyhood as well as a sharp period piece tracking the changing social and political climate of New York. Inez and Terry’s story is inextricable from the targeted gentrification of Black and brown neighbourhoods, the rise of the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy under then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, and the police brutality that resulted in the heinous assault of Haitian-American Abner Louima and the murder of Guinean student Amadou Diallo

Inez, who spends a decade struggling to carve a home for herself and her son out of nothing, doesn’t often have the luxury of feeling secure enough to look ahead and start planning for the future. Accordingly, there’s never a moment in the film in which it feels like Taylor is anticipating what’s to come for her character. It’s acting that feels wide open, exposed to every twist of fate and rare marvel Inez encounters. A Thousand and One is the first feature from writer-director A.V. Rockwell. From its start, when Inez effectively abducts her kid, Rockwell never chooses the obvious route in her sweeping story. That inciting incident would seem to set up the two of them on the run. Instead, in a development that’s more clear-eyed than cynical, no one in the beleaguered system appears to register Terry’s absence. “Why’s nobody looking for me?” the boy, who’s played by Aaron Kingsley Adetola as a child and by Aven Courtney and Josiah Cross as a teenager, murmurs with something close to affront while watching kids playing by the school he can’t attend

In foster care, Terry ended up in the hospital after some uncertain act of abuse or neglect. And while Inez may love him, their life together is marked by its own precariousness. In one memorable sequence Terry spends the day alone while she’s at work, jumping on the sofa and lounging in front of the TV in the remnants of his spilled cereal, a montage of childhood boredom with an undercurrent of dread. But again, Rockwell doesn’t opt for the expected turn, showing a capacity for generosity that extends to Inez’s on-off boyfriend Lucky (William Catlett), who turns up in the living room one day like an ill omen, only to grow into a complicated but treasured presence in Terry’s life. A Thousand and One strides forward across the years, accompanied by news feeds as the Giuliani era gives way to the ascendance of Mike Bloomberg, the audio playing over shots of boarded-up buildings that are then replaced by condos and chain stores. The film’s title refers to the number of the Harlem apartment that Inez, Lucky, and Terry share (the dash in the middle having fallen off), a hard-won sanctuary that’s gradually threatened by the city’s changes