Hamdardi: Recognition and Compassion Under the State’s Nose

Stefan Fairlamb and Ashley Tabatabai’s Hamdardi, a retrospective look at Trump’s Muslim ban seven years ago, splits the narrative between an immigration officer and two stranded Iranian siblings in the eye of the storm—a US airport. At twenty-seven minutes, the film takes its time to map out its similarities to and differences from 2004’s The Terminal. 

The mood and tone are entirely different. There is no loveable protagonist to root for, no romantic yearning to sigh over. Instead, Officer Ethan Reynolds (Tabatabai, also the screenwriter) forms a dyad with siblings Reza (Arian Nik) and Parvaneh (Ayla Rose) based on shared grief. Both, for American reasons, are separated from their family. Reza and Parvaneh are barred from going to their father in a US hospital; CPS is keeping Ethan, recently widowed, from seeing his daughter, about the same age as Parvaneh. The focus leans more heavily towards Ethan than Reza, as he puzzles out his role in the machinery or copes with his personal losses. 

The conflict is embodied in Officer Hank Henson (Mitchell Mullen), a less dynamic, more brutish mirror of Stanley Tucci’s Frank Dixon. He is the face of the panopticon, looming over Ethan, travellers, and protestors alike with oppressive weight from the mezzanine. His physical presence has by now become non-essential, dwarfed by the effect of his iron-clad tyranny. 

While the colour palette is uniformly blue-grey of the post-9/11 thrillers, the film veers more towards a stagnant sort of tension (as fittingly weary and stale as the characters with little to eat, no bed, few chairs, and so on) as disenfranchised travellers powerlessly resist administrative orders and aggressive officers, only to dwindle in numbers from the waiting room. The general emptiness is hard not to be affected by, leaving the viewer worn down by the time the climax trudges around. The rare speck of sunshine is the tender, tenuous bond Ethan develops with Parvaneh, however impeded by language and their respective roles. 

Hamdardi is immediately interesting because of the specific event it refers to, the temporal proximity and fraught nature of it begging to be synthesised into works of art that move, infuriate, puzzle, comfort and confront. The film takes its baby steps toward that with a narrative that lays out the anger and exhaustion of waiting. Not many can be equal to Viktor Navorski’s unbeatable zest. 

Watch Hamdardi Short Film Trailer