A romantic comedy-drama, The Terminal tells the story of Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks, Catch Me If You Can), a visitor to New York City from Eastern Europe, whose homeland erupts in a fiery coup while he is in the air en route to America. Stranded at John F. Kennedy International Airport with a passport from nowhere, he is unauthorized to actually enter the United States and must improvise his days and nights in the terminal's international transit lounge until the war at home is over.

As the weeks and months stretch on, Viktor finds the self-contained universe of the terminal to be a richly complex world of absurdity, generosity, ambition, amusement, status, serendipity and even romance with a beautiful flight attendant named Amelia (Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Mask of Zorro). But Viktor has long worn out his welcome with airport official Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci, Road to Perdition), who considers him a bureaucratic glitch, a problem he cannot control but wants desperately to erase.

Rounding out the winning ensemble cast of The Terminal are Chi McBride, Diego Luna, Barry Shabaka Henley, Kumar Pallana and Zoe Saldana as the airport terminal employees who befriend Viktor.

Walter F. Parkes (Men in Black), Laurie MacDonald (The Ring) and Steven Spielberg produced The Terminal. The screenplay is by Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson from a story by Niccol and Gervasi, with regular Spielberg collaborators including cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, editor Michael Kahn and composer John Williams joined by costume designer Mary Zophres (Catch Me If You Can) and in a feat of dynamic, functional production design in which he created an entire airport terminal, Alex McDowell (Minority Report).