Hamdardi

As someone who has quite a culturally diverse background, I've always found it complicated to plant my proverbial flag in the sand and align my identity with one sole country. My Mum is half English, half German. My Dad was from Iran. I was born in the UK, but moved to Spain at 5 and grew up there and I sound American. So, answering "where are you from?" has always been complex. To that end, I've been lucky to grow up in such an International environment and be able to see people for who they are rather than a label of where they are from.

That being said, I soon saw many instances of how people were treat differently because of their country of origin. My Dad, a British citizen since the late 1970's would get stopped when travelling to the US. At times, people in the UK would use derogatory slurs when lashing out based solely on his appearance. I myself have been "random" checked when flying from the UK to the US on enough occasions to know that it's not random. Solely because my last name is from Iran. And whilst I can understand how that sort of compartmentalisation can happen, I believe we need to see beyond just the labels if we're ever going to find more harmony as a global society.

January 27th 2017 was the antithesis of seeing beyond those labels. When the President of the United States passed Executive Order 13769, anyone from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen or Iraq was banned from entering the country. The media went into a frenzy, people protested, the uproar was palpable. And underneath it all, regular people were drastically affected. My cousin was and still is living in Tehran. Her brother was on a student visa in Philadelphia and her parents were in San Francisco on Green Cards. But she never had any desire to go down that route.

Amidst the chaos of the travel ban, her father fell ill. He was admitted into the ICU in San Francisco and it became quickly apparent that he didn't have long left. In normal circumstances the human instinct would be to go be with your loved ones. But my cousin couldn't. Because she was from a country that was on a ban list. And so she was deprived of the humanity of being able to see her dying Father one last time. Deprived of getting to say goodbye. She was prevented from being able to grieve with her Mom and brother as a family. She was left to struggle through the mourning process all on her own.

This short film is inspired by what happened to my family. And by the countless other stories of regular people being kept apart from those they love. Whilst on the surface it is about the travel ban, it is really about family and seeing beyond the labels we impose upon one another. It's about looking beyond the veil, dropping judgements and realising that we are all humans, with families, goals, desires, hopes and dreams.