Fremont

9/9/2023

Life can be so confusing at times that we really don’t know where we stand with it, other than having a clear sense that what we’re experiencing isn’t working and that we desperately need direction to help fix it. But who are we to turn to if we have few friends and no family for meaningful, helpful guidance? Peers? Co-workers? A psychiatrist? Such is the fate of Donya (Anita Wali Zada), an Afghan transplant living in Fremont, CA, a distant suburb of San Francisco and home to a large population of her country’s fellow immigrants. Having worked as a translator for the US Army while in Afghanistan, she qualified for a special exit visa program that brought her to safety in America when the US pulled out of the war-torn nation. She now holds what appears to be a reasonably well-paying, decide

9/22/2023

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

1/11/2025

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