Each morning Donya (Anaita Wali Zada) leaves her tight-knit community of Afghan immigrants in Fremont, California. She crosses the Bay to work at a family-run fortune cookie factory in San Francisco. Donya drifts through her routine, struggling to connect with the culture and people of her new, unfamiliar surroundings while processing complicated feelings about her past as a translator for the U.S. government in Afghanistan. Unable to sleep, she finagles her way into a regular slot with a therapist (Gregg Turkington) who grasps for prospective role models. When an unexpected promotion at work thrusts Donya into the position to write her own story, she communicates her loneliness and longing through a concise medium: the fortunes inside each cookie. Donya’s koans travel, making a humble social impact and expanding her world far beyond Fremont and her turbulent past, including an encounter with a quiet auto mechanic (Jeremy Allen White) who could stand to see his own world expanded. Tenderly sculpted and lyrically shot in black-and-white, Babak Jalali’s FREMONT is a wry, deadpan vision of the universal longing for home.
“A drama with a spare, wry tone that belies its earnest and ample substance.”
Richard Brody
The New Yorker
“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
“sometimes it only takes one person who speaks your language for a foreign place to feel like a new kind of home”
David Ehrlich
IndieWire
Winner
Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Feature
Independent Film Festival Boston 2023
Winner
Best Director
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2023
Nominee
NEXT Innovator Award
Sundance 2023
Nominee
Audience Award
SXSW 2023
Anaita Wali Zada in FREMONT. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Anaita Wali Zada and Gregg Turkington in FREMONT. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Anaita Wali Zada in FREMONT. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Jeremy Allen White in FREMONT. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Anaita Wali Zada in FREMONT. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Anaita Wali Zada in FREMONT. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Anaita Wali Zada and Jeremy Allen White in FREMONT. Courtesy of Music Box Films.