Educational Media Reviews Online

In 2017, the United States President Donald Trump signed the Executive Order #13769 to protect Americans “from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States; and to prevent the admission of foreign nationals who intend to exploit United States immigration laws for malevolent purposes.” As a result, the Executive Order, commonly referred to as the “Muslim ban,” prohibited travel from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for ninety days.

A Week with Azar (original title Yek haefteh ba azar), a short documentary film, examines how the Executive Order and travel restrictions affected international students and immigrants by highlighting a personal story of Azar Rahimi, Iranian-born young women living, studying, and working in the USA for seven years. Being a non-US citizen, she was not able to visit her terminally ill sister in Iran, who sadly passed away during that banning travel period.

To show organic solidarity with Azar and help her to adapt to new reality, the filmmaker Tara Najd Ahmadi invited Azar to visit her. During the visit, Tara symbolically captured and filmed Azar’s feelings of grief, stress, and frustration during her difficult time. After the travel ban was suspended, Azar was able to travel back to the homeland, reconnect with family, and visit her sister’s grave.

The filmmaker used fragmented narrative style to document the factual details of Azar’s story in chronological order including the dates and hours. The narration of the film is in Farsi language with English subtitles. Music supplied by Internet Archive in association with Prelinger Archives. The film is appropriate for school, public, and academic library collections.

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