An Iranian man who lived at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport for 18 years and inspired the Steven Spielberg film “The Terminal” died at the airport on Saturday, officials said. Merhan Karimi Nasseri died of a heart attack in Terminal 2F of the airport around noon, according to a Paris airport authority official. The police and medical team treated him but could not save him, the officer said. The official was not authorized to be publicly named. His saga inspired “The Terminal” and a French film starring Tom Hanks.
Karimi Nasseri is believed to have been born in 1945. Mehran first settled at the airport in 1988, when the United Kingdom refused her political asylum as a refugee despite having a Scottish mother.
According to Variety, he intentionally chose to stay at the airport after declaring himself stateless and reportedly always carried his belongings with him. As Variety reports, Mehran first left the airport in 2006 after being hospitalized, 18 years after first settling there, spending time reading, writing diary entries and studying economics.
Spielberg decided to make the 2004 film “The Terminal” based on his unorthodox position. It starred Tom Hanks as an Eastern European man who lives at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport after being denied entry to the United States.
In addition, the 1993 French film ‘Tombes du Siel’ starring Jean Rochefort, also inspired by Mehran, was the subject of several documentaries and journalistic profiles. According to Variety, he is believed to have been born in the Iranian city of Masjid Soleiman in 1945 and his autobiography ‘The Terminal Man’ was published in 2004.