Aptly for a film partly set in a fortune cookie factory, Fremont deals with luck — specifically, the other side of good luck: survivor’s guilt. Donya (played by real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada) is a former translator for the US Army who fled her home city of Kabul on an emergency evacuation flight when the Taliban took over in 2021. Now living a safe, if drab, existence in the titular Californian town, insomniac Donya struggles to embrace her freedom, tormented by the knowledge that she lost some of her old colleagues to reprisal attacks and that her loved ones are still living under repressive rule in Afghanistan.
As Donya shuttles between her little apartment in Fremont, her job writing cryptic one-liners for a fortune cookie factory in San Francisco, and appointments with her eccentric psychiatrist (Gregg Turkington), Fremont balances a moving study of her melancholy with deadpan humor. Despite its black-and-white cinematography and tight Academy ratio, this is no austere drama, but an endlessly warm and understated portrait of someone rediscovering themselves and all of life’s unexpected moments of connection, like chance romantic encounters and sudden tears at karaoke.
"The story is suffused with an uncommon blend of radiance and resignation, nowhere more rapturously than in the final shot."
— Anthony Lane
"A charming little Jarmuschian number."
— Hannah Strong
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.
Desperate for a dream, a lonely, guilt-ridden Afghan refugee tries to forge an outside connection using her job writing prophecies for fortune cookies.
Fremont is undoubtedly beautiful to look at and filled with wryly funny and quietly moving performances (including one from Jeremy Allen White), but it’s Wali Zada who steals the film. As Donya, she gradually opens her initially despondent character up for us, making for an eloquent, multi-layered performance that's pitch-perfect for Fremont’s quirky Wes Anderson-style blend of wistfulness and dry comedy — no easy feat for the professionally trained, let alone a first-time actor.
I’m not a fortune cookie, but I’m predicting a bright future ahead for Anaita Wali Zada.
Spirit Awards
1 win, 1 nomination
Sundance
1 nomination
