Trapped Between Borders
In the 2004 film The Terminal, a traveler lands at an American airport only to discover that his country’s government has collapsed. With his passport no longer valid, he can’t enter the United States, but he also can’t go home again—so he ends up living at the airport indefinitely. Watch highlights from the film with your team, then consider the real case of Mehran Karimi Nasser that inspired it. Why do you think Steven Spielberg made the changes to the story that he did? And what should governments do in situations like these? You may also want to look into some more recent examples of people stuck in airports, including that of Edward Snowden.
In the film The Terminal, a traveler lands in America just as his country's government collapses — his passport suddenly worthless, he can't enter the U.S. and can't fly home, so he lives in the airport. It's based on Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who actually lived in Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport for eighteen years. The in-between can become a home.
Key concepts
- The Legal Limbo
- When someone loses a valid passport or refugee status mid-journey, they can fall between nations — unable to enter the country they're in or return to the one they left.
- The Airport As Non-home
- An airport is designed for passing through, never staying; living in one turns the ultimate in-between space into a permanent residence — a powerful image of not-belonging.
- Fiction Vs. Reality
- Spielberg softened Nasseri's strange, sad story into a heartwarming tale — and comparing the two reveals what movies choose to add, remove, or sweeten.
- Statelessness
- Having no country that will claim you and the rights that come with it; Snowden, stuck in Moscow after his passport was revoked, shows it can happen for political reasons too.
What to know
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The premise is less far-fetched than it sounds: Nasseri really lived in an airport for eighteen years and others have for months — so The Terminal dramatizes a genuine gap in how nations handle people who lose their legal right to be anywhere.
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