10 Insane Movies You Didn't Know Were Based On True Stories

This often overlooked 2004 comedy drama was the third collaboration between two of cinema's biggest names, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. It casts Hanks as a foreign national who finds himself forced to live full-time in the JFK Airport terminal, when he is denied entry to the US at the same time that political turmoil means he is unable to return home.

The film is broadly based on the true experiences of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who, owing to similar circumstances, was forced to remain in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for 18 years.

Though DreamWorks Pictures paid Nasseri a reported $250,000 for the rights to his life story (as relayed in his autobiography The Terminal Man), the film took very significant artistic licence.

This might be readily apparent, given that it's set in New York rather than Paris, plus the fact that Tom Hanks clearly isn't Iranian. Instead, his character is said to be from Krakozhia; and if you're struggling to think where that country is, that's because it doesn't actually exist.