Shabana Azmi was detained this week at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. When asked to state the purpose of her visit, Shabana reportedly said that she was here to ‘shoot’, a term often used to refer to filming, in cinema circles. “Very innocently I said that I had come for shooting. The immigration officer was shocked. ‘Whom have you come to shoot?’ he asked me. I calmed him down, corrected myself and said that I meant that I was filming. Only slightly relieved, he said ‘Why did you say shooting?’ I told him it’s a cultural thing. Really, are we actors supposed to stop saying we’re shooting merely because the word has alarming connotations,” she told Deccan Chronicle.
Shabana is currently in the US with other ‘like-minded’ women for a film titled Signature Moves. “I play the protagonist’s mother who has a complicated relationship with her daughter in spite of the immense bond they share,” she said. The film is directed by Jennifer Reeder and produced by Brian Hieggelke. Academy and Emmy nominated actor Michael Shannon has invested in the film with The Tribeca Film Institute (founded by Robert De Niro) mentoring the production.
News of Azmi’s run-in with the Immigration Officials comes just a week after Shah Rukh Khan was detained for the third time in the US. Expressing his disgust over being racially profiled by the authorities too often, SRK tweeted:
“I fully understand & respect security with the way the world is, but to be detained at US immigration every damn time really really sucks.”
Khan has a history of getting detained at airports. He was first detained in 2009 by airport authorities at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. His name was featured under an alert list in the computer. The second incident was in 2012 at the White Plains Airport near New York.
