The story happened in the late 1980s. Victor Navorski was an Eastern European. In order to realize his father's wish, he decided to go to the United States and bought a plane ticket to the United States with simple luggage. When he got off the plane at the JFK Airport in New York at the terminal station to leave the airport, he was stopped. It turned out that there was a coup in his home country.
This means that Victor's passport and ID are all useless, and he was detained at the airport. Standing in this country that doesn't belong to him, Victor couldn't help feeling confused when he watched the strange crowd coming and going. In desperation, he could only stay at the airport and sleep on a chair in the lobby, take a bath in the bathroom, and live by serving the passing passengers. All he has is his unfree body, as well as a small suitcase, which contains a change of clothes, a razor, and an invalid identity certificate.
During this period of stay at the airport, Victor has been enduring the torture of the airport official Frank Dixon. Dixon regards Victor as a symbol of bad luck, thinking that he is a big trouble, hard to control and trying to desperately solve. But this did not cause too much trouble for Victor. This old man happily found a huge and rich world of life in such a small and condensed physical space, and found that every day he passed by all kinds of people and them. The sorrows and joys of their respective lives found that this place was full of generosity and ambition, absurdity and surprise, identity and status, conformity and unexpected adventures. And he also had a romantic love with the stewardess Amily here. In the end, Victor met everything in the United States at this airport, and also met his happiness.
