Short film ‘Nadia’s Visa’ dramatizes visa struggles among Arabs hoping to enter Western countries

In “Nadia’s Visa,” a short film by Hanadi Elyan screening at the OC Film Fiesta on Oct. 27, individuals at the embassy wait to find out whether their visas will be approved.

Their phones have been temporarily confiscated. They engage in hushed conversations, sharing past failed visa attempts (“Everyone gets rejected the first time”) and pointing out the employees known for being especially unsympathetic.

The protagonist, Nadia (played by Nadia Hamzeh), lives in a different country than her husband and daughter and wants to visit for her daughter’s birthday. This is her second attempt to get a tourist visa.

Don’t tell them you have family there, people advise. They’ll think you plan to stay.

“I wanted to show a modern Arab woman who speaks English, is educated and has a job,” says Elyan, a graduate student at UCLA film school who previously studied filmmaking in Jordan and started a production company, Reel Arab Productions, in Dubai. “Because if you watch a lot of Arab movies over the years, you’ll start seeing patterns and stereotypes of an oppressed woman, which is fine … but it’s not the only narrative out there.”

Elyan remembers seeing an older woman tell an embassy employee that her son lived in the country she was trying to visit, only to get her visa rejected through a paper held up to the window with the following message written in Arabic: “We need more information at the current time.” A similar scene is in the film.

Elyan was intent on keeping the Middle Eastern country where Nadia lives and the Western country she wants to visit ambiguous, because she says this happens to Arabs all around the world.

“If you’re going on a holiday, it’s annoying but it’s fine,” she says, detailing her own struggles and delays getting visas (despite the fact that her “record is amazing”), compared to her Irish husband who she says has only ever had to go in for a visa interview once, prior to attending a wedding in Nigeria.

“It’s more about the idea of not having the freedom of travel,” she says. “I thought, what if there were higher stakes?”

“Nadia’s Visa” also features the story of a civil engineering student named Sami who was barred from returning to finish his studies after going back home for the Eid holiday.

His character is based on real-life people like Ismail B. Ajjawi, an incoming Harvard University freshman who was temporarily barred from entering the U.S. after being questioned by immigration officials over his friends’ social media posts.

“These employees often have the attitude of a club bouncer: they’re like, ‘I own you,’ ” she says.

But she didn’t want to portray them as evil, just as workers doing their jobs.

“I wanted to see that person who’s controlling other people’s lives willy-nilly, outside of the context of being behind the glass, outside of their comfort zone,” she says. “Because in the end, it’s not a person doing these things, it’s a bureaucracy.”

“‘Nadia’s Visa’ is a human story where you can see how international policy affects people and their families,” says Victor Payan, co-director of the OC Film Fiesta.

He curated a spotlight on contemporary Middle Eastern films at this year’s festival to honor an important population of the Orange County immigrant community and to combat the often one-dimensional stories Americans get about the Middle East in the news.

Elyan is currently working on her first feature film, “Salma’s Home,” about three women thrown together after the death of a family member.

“A man dies in the beginning of the film, and his two wives realize that he never signed the papers to divorce his first wife,” says Elyan. “So they, along with the first wife’s daughter, have to navigate the inheritance together and make peace.”

She’s proud that there are three complex Arab women from three generations as protagonists.

“I’m writing stuff that I want to see,” says Elyan. “What I’m trying to do is to find a balance, staying true to our culture, but at the same time having a wider appeal so others can understand us.”

IF YOU GO

What: “Nadia’s Visa,” as part of OC Film Fiesta’s Spotlight on the Middle East (Shorts), which also includes Morvarid Kashiyan’s “Bodies,” Amir Masoud Soheili’s “Elephantbird,” Sam Wall’s “Non-Crimes of Orange County” and Hanieh Bavali’s “The Passport”

Where: AMC Orange 30, 20 City Boulevard W., Orange

When: Oct. 27, 10 a.m. to noon

Cost: $10 a screening; $5 for student, teachers, Santa Ana residents, military and veterans

Information: nadiasvisafilm.com; hanadielyan.com

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