Film Notes

Filmed in stunning black and white, Babak Jalali’s “Fremont” is visually captivating as it renders California’s East Bay as a character of its own. However, it never outshines the film’s focus: Donya (Anaita Wali Zada). Donya works at a fortune cookie factory, writing the sentiments inside. But as she doles out fortunes for those around her, she struggles to clinch her own. 

Donya can’t sleep. She spends her nights in a twin bed staring at the ceiling and her days going from the cookie factory to her awkward but thoughtful therapist. Donya is an Afghan refugee (as is Zada) who served as a translator for the United States Army during the war. For this, she carries survivor’s guilt that sours the idea of “moving on.” Donya feels that a life of love and enjoyment is unfair when so many Afghans live in a country plagued by war. As she vies for an existence of connection and contentment, “Fremont,” and intrinsically, its heroine, are marked by a feeling of displacement. 

Donya floats through her days with little stimulation or decision, a stringent routine followed by a lackluster evening of wakefulness. The film’s sound design holds a sharp presence that absorbs us within her world. “Fremont” is quiet, and its silence has a reason, holding the weight and impact of conversations in the film’s dialogue-heavy format. From deep breaths to fingers tapping on desks, the occupancy of a character in a scene is often the only sound we’re afforded. When the score is present, its inclusion is resonant, marking a moment of uncertainty or transition. 

Conversation is the backbone of “Fremont,” which is written by Jalali and Carolina Cavalli. Donya is the film’s first and foremost priority, and it’s not just her moments in solitude but her limited conversations with those around her that color her perspective. From a somewhat nosy but amiable work friend to an elderly restaurant worker she spends evenings watching soap operas with, Donya is always at arm’s length from true connection. An Afghan woman in her apartment complex is the closest thing she has to a friendship of mutual understanding, but her husband despises Donya, seeing her as a traitor for having worked with the United States Army.

Zada is excellent as Donya, undoubtedly reaching from a sincere source as a refugee herself. Donya’s exhausted stoicism and touches of sarcasm excellently paint a woman who is tired but trying. As low lids, slow blinks, and a still body express her spiritual depletion, when Zada triggers a subtle smirk or a witty response, we see a shadow of the woman Donya is beneath the shame. Laura Valladao’s black and white images are incredibly intimate, filled with various stunning close-ups, where expression and texture fill the screen with feeling. 

As we spend the film’s 86-minute run time getting to know Donya, we witness the little bumps of intonation in her monotone speech. We can discern minute changes in her disposition that point to nervousness, hope, annoyance, and dejection. This is a testament to the tight grip that Zada has on Donya’s truth and authenticity. The terrific nuance of her portrayal is utterly real. It makes us feel like we truly know her. Her performance doesn’t lay it out flat; it gives us empathetic credit. 

Donya yearns for sleep, stable ground, love, and fulfillment. A beacon finally comes in the film’s final act via an innocuous but impactful run-in with a timid, though very charming mechanic played by Jeremy Allen White. This meet cute is endearing enough, and Zada and White’s chemistry translates through the screen, but it’s a notable divergence from the value the film had built thus far. Such a tacked-on romantic subplot feels overly convenient and simplified, undercutting her agency and self-efficacy with a white knight in a dirty jumpsuit. White’s inclusion is well executed, and yet the absolution it is treated with is unneeded. Love is only a modicum of Donya’s story. The perspective of immigrant guilt and her desire to overcome herself is markedly treated with more interest and heft elsewhere in “Fremont.” But the film treats the potential of a romance with a resolve that feels like a familiar, vacant bullet point from many female-forward narratives previously written by men. 

“Fremont” contains a notable calmness in its filmmaking, and its gorgeous lead performance quietly reaches poignance without flamboyance. It is a stunning mood piece that takes pride in its stillness and slow pace, ultimately delivering a tale of intimacy, searching, and quiet strength. 

Peyton Robinson, Roger Ebert.com August 25, 2023

‘Fremont’ Review: Unearthed by Sundance, This Minor-Key Immigrant Tale Is Sweet and Sneakily Powerful

Babak Jalali's assured black-and-white indie drama strikes a beautiful tone with a deadpan sense of humor, aided by Anaita Wali Zada's quietly poignant performance.

“The fortune you’re looking for is in another cookie,” reads one of the many custom fortune cookie messages featured in “Fremont,” a lovely, low-budget mood piece with a hypnotically deadpan temperament, which flew largely below the radar at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. While Iranian filmmaker Babak Jalali’s easygoing fable-like movie serves up such oracular tidbits in abundance, this one defines his central character best. She is Donya (real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada), a lonesome and restless Afghan immigrant working at a family-owned fortune cookie factory in San Francisco by day, and enduring severe insomnia by night, in a Fremont apartment complex that also houses other immigrants from her motherland.

Donya can’t sleep for several reasons, though the aforementioned morsel recognizes at least one: What she’s looking for in life seems to be elsewhere. It’s certainly not in her dead-end job or uncomplicated social life. Still, most of Donya’s sleeplessness seems to stem from something far more troubling: survivor’s guilt. Once a translator for the American troops back in Kabul, Donya had been able to flee Afghanistan through her post, settling in a country where some don’t even know the proper way of addressing her identity and heritage. (“Afghan,” she corrects one of those well-meaning but uninformed people who erroneously call her “Afghanistani.”)

While her new life isn’t necessarily terrible, self-inflected feelings of shame haunt Donya. Does she deserve to find happiness abroad when people are still dying back home? Is she worthy of making connections with good people, much less daring to dream about finding love?

Donya is at least surrounded by nice acquaintances, including various delightful co-workers who make smalltalk about their daydreams to win a million dollars and then invest it all in a community pool. Elsewhere, her neighbors Suleyman and Salim can be trusted for philosophical pep talks at all hours. She’s friendly with an amusing waiter at the unpopular restaurant Donya frequents, who tries to hide his affinity for Turkish soap operas. There is also the kindly Chinese couple, Donya’s employers, who finally promote the young woman from wrapping the cookies to writing the messages within. (“People with memories write beautifully,” the patriarch wisely and rightly suggests.) And finally, Donya can lean a little on her newfound therapist (Gregg Turkington), a pro-bono dispenser of advice who (in a hilarious scene) relies on the Jack London novel “White Fang” a little too much, to help alleviate his patient’s ongoing restlessness.

Shot in misty black-and-white and co-scripted by Jalali and Carolina Cavalli with a straight-faced sense of humor, “Fremont” is a quasi-comedy that strikes a vibe akin to the films of Jim Jarmusch. The biggest achievement of Jalali here is the precise tone that he strikes with his mild-mannered movie: never cutesy (an especially impressive feat considering the film’s whimsically Sundance-y premise), and always several feet deeper in its themes and deliberations around human isolation than meets the eye. Communicating with expressively wide-set eyes and the resolute gaze of someone who always knows and observes more than they admit, Zada’s performance helps achieve the film’s tricky balance, which Jalali aids with smart framing choices and the use of negative space. As the film’s wistful lead, Zada gives the minor-key impression of an intriguing personality worth getting to know better and, who knows, maybe even solve the mysteries of the universe together.

In the largely crescendo-free “Fremont,” the story’s flashiest spike happens when Donya finally decides to use her new power as a fortune cookie writer to send out messages to the world. Her pleas vary from flat-out optimistic and encouraging, to a little desperate, one of which finally gets her in a little trouble with her bosses. But despite the story’s overall monotony, Jalali thankfully proves that he knows how to end a film on a note that feels inevitably right. In its final chapter, “Fremont” rewards the viewer with a splendid cameo: Jeremy Allen White (yes, everyone’s favorite chef, thanks to “The Bear”) appears as a handsome and inquisitive mechanic who’s helpful to Donya — and who might turn out to be something more. In its final moments, the potency of “Fremont” sneaks up on you. You go in reluctant and even skeptical, and come out wondering how and why you’re moved to tears.

Tomris Laffly, Variety, Feb 2, 2023 

What you thought about Fremont

Film Responses

Collated Response Comments

110 members and guests attended this screening. The total number of responses was 61, giving a film score of 3.79 and a response rate of 55%.

All of your comments are collected below.

"This seems at first like a considerable loss of momentum after the high drama of 'Bastarden', the lack of discernible direction to the plot, the contemplative camera's gaze as we consider quite what is going on in Donya's head and what her past consists of. Yet the longer we look, as little of consequence appears to happen in this elegantly monochrome world, the more curious and engaged we become and the flexions of her face and voice gain meaning as we get to know her. There are, in the gnomic statements, stilted dialogue and oddball characters, considerable warm echoes of the slacker boys of late eighties and early nineties; Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater, Jim Jarmusch, Wes Anderson and particularly for me Hal Hartley - this even has the quiet, handsome mechanic of 'The Unbelievable Truth'. The ending is an unlikely leap but keenly desired in much the same way as 'Bastarden''s finale, it perhaps does not allow the stoic, likeable but troubled Donya to solve her problems entirely by her own agency but is charming nonetheless. A film of considerable gentle allure that wears its depth lightly".

“For a film which was generally critically acclaimed, I found it slower moving than it needed to be, given its linear narrative.  However, it was carefully made: monochrome and non-widescreen gave it a dated look, but the use of smartphones quickly settled it as contemporary, as the history confirmed.  Much staring directly into the camera and great pauses in the dialogue as themes, continued the director's particular way of putting over the serious issues underlying the light story.  But the psychiatrist scenes ran parallel with the main story, without properly engaging with it, leaving me unconvinced by them.   Good, especially the lead actress, but it could have gone quicker. Maybe I had a bad night, but the BBC comedy I found mediocre, in spite of Mark Bonnar"

“Despite the excellent acting, the film felt far too slow in places. Not one of my favourites but still worth watching, so thank you”.

“Beautiful nuanced acting. Slow start but once you go with this, its pace is almost meditative. The main song is definitely an earworm and beautifully sung. The pain of not belonging, being thought a traitor... wondering what will happen in her life Well done everyone for bringing a human story to life humanely”.

“A delight. "The fortune you seek is in another cookie." Indeed it was. Liked the irony in this understated film, a small-scale drama of interiors. Struck me as anti-American Dream: a migrant out west without ambition in a California barely showing its wide vistas. Thought that the film says most when it's communicating all that Donya doesn't voice. Her agitation brings defiance and longing, breathing life into Donya's impassive stare. Enjoyed the unforced observational gentle style that suits the material. Zada's portrayal is splendid, wrapping fortune cookies, idly talking with the offbeat Joanna, eating in an empty restaurant with a TV playing soap operas. The moody black and white lends the material a more intimate feel. Dialogue is delivered deadpan, pretty reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes. Odd moments in Donya's life raise a chuckle, especially when she's talking with Dr Anthony, her shrink. Turkington's reflections on White Fang are just about meaningful even though faintly bizarre. Donya's slipping of her phone number into a cookie brings a gently awkward love interest with a mechanic - a bittersweet moment of connection. Joanna's performance of 'Diamond Day' is staggeringly simple, a captivating scene that comes out of the blue. When it finally cuts back to Donya – now tear-stained – it's like a miracle has happened. We see her growing certainty willingness to change her habits. Maybe the film does its own translation of who we think she is versus who she actually is. Thanks for showing this”.

“This was not what I was expecting at all and it was a very slow burn. However, it highlighted very effectively the extreme isolation and loneliness experienced by Afghans relocated to a foreign country with no support network and then surprisingly counterbalanced that angle with the suggestion of similar loneliness within the working white people of the US. Pity about the breaks, presumably due to a fault with DVD. Had anyone run this before the screening I wonder?”

“Some films can be languorously engrossing...but for me, this was just slow and uneventful!”

“Very slow paced but nonetheless engaging, with diverse and interesting characters. I didn't think it made the most of its setting in the Bay Area and felt like it could have been anywhere in America. Good acting and enjoyed it being in monochrome. Marked as good, but only marginally above average. Another interesting choice. Thanks”.

“Very slow paced but nonetheless engaging, with diverse and interesting characters. I didn't think it made the most of its setting in the Bay Area and felt like it could have been anywhere in America. Good acting and enjoyed it being in monochrome. Marked as good, but only marginally above average. Another interesting choice. Thanks”.

“Best suited for a patient art house movie audience like GFS? I'm not sure. However charming and lovely this slow burning portrait of an Afghan refugee in America might be, it is lacking in spark and punch. That's a nice way of saying it is a bit tedious at moments; coffee machine, etc. As for the performance of the lead actress, yes deadpan looks and emotionless responses, are all the rage these days, but it's not enough to overcome the listless and hahaha script”.

“Rather slow but with a whimsical elegiac feel at times very reminiscent of a Hopper painting. The humanity in the chance encounter of two lonely people was touching”.

“This is my favourite film (so far) of this season. It told the story of 'people on the edges' so artfully, gently, sensitively, humanely and with humour. Some lovely images too. The actor who played the young woman was very strong…but "Joanna's" singing also made me cry and ' dipstick' Dave was a delight. Each character was believable and well portrayed. Will be recommending!”

“A beautifully made sensitive film. a lot to think about”

“Great use of music to indicate mood”.

“This season keeps giving, wonderful!”

“Very moving. Ending uplifting”.

“Felt like an arthouse chilled out Wes Anderson movie. Beautifully and cleverly shot. I have a feeling this is the type of film that will get under the skin and be rattling around my head for a while”.

“An interesting film. pace reflected her trauma but tested the audience”.

“Interesting”. “I loved it”.

“Enjoyed a change of pace and the characterisations (relationships between them)”.

Two lonely lives meeting. Not sure though that I understood it, but did eventually”.

“Interesting but a bit boring though and slow motion – could be slightly shorter”.

“A slow burner but interesting. A study in loneliness – loved the therapist – White fnf was a book I loved”.

“Surprisingly quirky, funny but slow”.

“Interesting film”.

“But could have done without White Fang”.

“Enjoyed the black and white, humour and romance”.

“Shows you have to be open to new opportunities”.

“Well, I didn’t know what to make of this film. it had possibilities…. what did the note in the fortune cookie say? Will she really be happy with the dour mechanic?”

“Couldn’t really understand the moral of the story. Changing one monotonous life for another”.

“Very slow to get going but a gentle …….ending”.

“Slow gentle moving film”. “Wish there was colour! A bit slow”.

“Slow, pretty boring”.

“I am sure it was supposed to be deep and meaningful but it got lost in being so slow”.

“Too slow, trying too hard to be clever”.

“Not inspiring. Too slow. No story”.

“Too slow and wooden”. “Too slow for me”.