The Terminal (2004)

The Terminal is a 2004 American comedy-drama directed by Steven Spielberg, inspired by the real story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who lived in Charles de Gaulle Airport for 18 years. Tom Hanks stars as Viktor Navorski, a citizen of the fictional Eastern European country of Krakozhia who arrives at JFK Airport in New York just as a military coup renders his country unrecognized by the United States, trapping him in a bureaucratic limbo — he cannot enter the country because his passport is invalid, but he cannot return home because his country technically no longer exists. Confined to the international transit lounge, Viktor builds a life within the terminal, befriending its workers, learning English, finding employment in construction, and developing a romance with a flight attendant played by Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Tom Hanks's performance, delivered in a carefully crafted Eastern European accent, was a showcase for his ability to find humor and warmth in the most constrained circumstances. Spielberg constructed an enormous, fully functional airport terminal set at an abandoned hangar in Palmdale, California, reportedly the largest set ever built at that time. Stanley Tucci's Frank Dixon, the airport security director whose rigid enforcement of rules makes him Viktor's antagonist, provided a foil that was bureaucratically villainous without being cartoonishly evil.

The Terminal earned $219 million worldwide.