Fremont

Fremont

By

  • Genre: Comedy, Drama
  • Release Date: 2023-08-25
  • Runtime: 92 minutes
  • : 6.418
  • Production Company: Butimar Productions
  • Production Country: United States of America
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6.418/10
6.418
From 79 Ratings

Description

Donya, a lonely Afghan refugee and former translator, spends her twenties drifting through a meager existence in Fremont, California. Shuttling between her job writing fortunes for a fortune cookie factory and sessions with her eccentric therapist, Donya suffers from insomnia and survivor's guilt over those still left behind in Kabul as she desperately searches for love.

Trailer

Reviews

  • CinemaSerf

    7
    By CinemaSerf
    This starts off with what has to be slowest, least efficient, example of the industrialisation process that I've ever seen! Those images rather set the scene for what follows as we meet fortune cookie maker "Donya" (a strong performance from Anaita Wali Zada). She was an interpreter for the US military in her native Afghanistan and has arrived in California on a special visa scheme and is awaiting proper settlement. She can't sleep, so manages to inveigle an appointment with the slightly eccentric psychiatrist "Dr. Anthony" (Gregg Turkington) and his rather unorthodox methods manage to illicit some clues (for us) from this rather reticent woman as to what drove and now drives her. Her love life is pretty much non-existent, but a mysterious text message that sends her on a drive might just sort that out - her savvy best pal "Joanna" (Hilda Schmelling) reckons that it might! It's quite hard to describe this film. Precious little actually happens, and the pace is glacial in the extreme - but it still works well as a characterful study of a woman who is having to come to terms with some profound changes to her circumstances and to deal with the loneliness, guilt and frustrations - as well as the opportunities - of her new life in a city where her situation is nothing particularly unusual. It's not a dreary introspective, though. There are moments of dark humour (usually from Turkington) as he uses "White Fang" to a surprisingly innovative effect. The film is an episode in her life, we have some details from her past and we see a glimmer of what might be on her horizon at the conclusion. It's interesting, oddly engaging and well worth a watch. Television will do fine though.

  • badelf

    10
    By badelf
    Fremont: A Cinematic Tone Poem of Displacement and Possibility In Babak Jalali's Fremont, cinema becomes poetry — a delicate cartography of human longing mapped across monochrome landscapes. Sahar, an Afghan refugee working in a fortune cookie factory, navigates her new life with a quiet, determined resilience. Take the moment her Chinese factory owners gift her a deer—seemingly random, until you understand the profound symbolism. Rooted in the Jataka Tales, the deer represents selflessness and courage, a Buddhist parable about sacrifice that reflects Sahar's own journey of transformation. (Sahar: "I worked with the enemy to ensure your security!") The film breathes in black and white, each frame a stanza of quiet revelation. The film's monochrome enhances the colorless landscape of the poem. When Gregg Turkington's psychiatrist comedically weeps while reading White Fang, or when Salim, the film's Shakespearean witch device, delivers philosophical pronouncements about stars and love's complicated geography, Jalali reveals how displacement is not just a physical journey, but requires an emotional metamorphosis. Sahar's precise fortune cookie writing is a longing to direct her own fortune. Traveling from Fremont to San Francisco to interact with "another culture" is her desire to integrate somewhere, to belong. Everything about this film — the script, Jalali's choices, the metaphors, the intimate cinematography, the acting — it all works so well. I get the references to Jarmusch and Kaurismäki, but in my opinion, this film is in the class with Wender's seminal tone poem, Wings of Desire. Fremont is THE cinematic tone poem of the 21st century. This isn't just narrative. Fremont is fluid metaphor — a poem written in light and shadow, in quiet tone, and in the unspoken languages of emigration and survival.

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