I loved Babak Jalali’s Radio Dreams (2016), and he doesn’t disappoint with the tonally very different but just as meticulous Fremont.

When Jalali was filming Radio Dreams, he discovered Fremont in San Francisco, a ‘Little Kabul’ that has the highest concentration of Afghans in the US. With many stories being told of the male translators for the US Army in Afghanistan who sought asylum in America, he wanted to tell the story of one of the women.

Donya (first time actor Anaita Wali Zada) lives in Fremont, but works in San Francisco’s Chinatown at a fortune cookie factory. Each day is routine and nondescript but at night she can’t sleep. She lives in an apartment block with other refugees – some who think of her as a traitor – and takes an opportunity to see a therapist, Dr Anthony (Gregg Turkington). He won’t give her the sleeping pills she wants without trying to unpack the trauma and shame she carries.

There is a dry humour, reminiscent of Radio Dreams, that permeates the film, from Donya’s impassive face, and her wry employer’s homilies to the therapist’s obsession with White Fang. The fortune cookies, and the tropes of fortune, and fate thread throughout, adding lightness to what could be a dark story.

The black-and-white cinematography and art direction are exquisite – the static camera frames a rich, tonal portrait with each scene, only set loose in one scene when Donya meets, by chance, a mechanic (Jeremy Allen White). It has been likened to early Jarmusch films and it has that same sense of late-night suburban limbo as Down by Law (1986) and Stranger than Paradise (1984).

Zada is a standout, her steady gaze reminiscent of Sheila Vand’s girl in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014). She is a non-actor, and fled Afghanistan under similar circumstances not long before the film was made. There is one scene where she shouts at a neighbour and producer Rachel Fung, who stayed for a Q&A after the film screening, talked about how Zada had never shouted in her life before and needed to be coached and coaxed through the scene.

Most of the cast are non-actors and are people living in Fremont, for example, the dour restaurant owner who was actually a worker in the supermarket next door from the filming location and took a lot of persuading to take part. The slow and stilted style of the film really works well with an unprofessional cast and doesn’t at all get in the way of the storytelling.

There are some gorgeous moments – the shot of Donya sitting on her motel room bed, looking at the white deer, the aerial shot of her talking to her workmate, Joanna (Hilda Schmelling), on the phone, and the moment where she and the mechanic, Daniel, see each other through the car window are some that really stick with me. And I’d love to see the fortunes that Dr Anthony wrote.

Director: Babak Jalali
Origin: USA (2023)
Language: Cantonese, Dari, English with English subtitles
Genre: Drama

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