Amir Reza Koohestani, "En transit", press conference of the 7 July 2022

In 2018, Amir Reza Koohestani was on his way to Chile when, during a layover in Munich, he was suddenly transferred by the border police to the airport transit zone, plainly referred to as the “waiting room.” To explain this turn of events, the director was told he had overstayed his Schengen visa. As it turns out, he had actually and inexplicably been delivered two different visas. After an interminable wait, he was sent back to Iran. By a cruel twist of fate, he’d found himself reading Anna Seghers’s Transit in a waiting room full of people experiencing the very Kafkaesque situation the protagonist of this political novel faces: the story of thousands of people trying to flee Nazi Europe and getting lost in the anonymous and disembodied system in charge of issuing visas.