Anna is a Czechoslovakian citizen but has studied and lived in the US for many years. Returning from a stint in Uganda working for a US hospital, she returns to start employment at their US base, only to find herself stopped at immigration.
This film popped up on a short film website very recently, and of course the subject matter means it is very topical right now – although it is a few years since it was made. The film essentially looks at a system which is huge and faceless, not really allowing for empathy or context; this could describe almost every large bureaucratic system in the world of course, but in this case it just happens to be US immigration. It must be a fairly tough job to do, but the film doesn't really look at that side but rather the impact of that lack of context. Anna is a positive immigration example for the US – she spent loads of money, and now brings her skills to the US too. However, she also has mistakes in her visa background.
The film portrays this sense of cold bureaucracy well, and the scenes in the single windowless room are the best parts of the film. Unfortunately they are not the only parts to the film. There is a boyfriend waiting outside the airport, and while this device gives the ending some weight, it also distracts as most of his scenes are not very good and didn't needed to have so much detail. The sentiment in these scenes spreads across the film in the music and tone, and it didn't really need to push it like this. Some of the writing is also a little weak; for instance, the device where the boyfriend asks someone about his girlfriend's flight, and she turns out to be a passenger on that flight who is now waiting for a connection (on the land-side of security though?). Some of the dialogue clunks too – Anna being called smarty-pants was a bad line.
Still, the core scenes do work well, and the film gives a sense of a system that is very cold in its details, and it plays this out well.
