It's in black and white, slow paced, nothing much happens. But that won't stop you enjoying Fremont.
Donya is a twenty-something Afghan, once a translator for the US Army, who manged to escape from her country, and the likely revenge of the Taliban, on one of the evacuation flights that left before Kabul fell. Now she's living in Fremont, California, in a tiny apartment, with largely Afghan neighbours, and working in a boring job in a Fortune Cookie factory. She can't sleep, she spends her evening watching TV with an old man, and life doesn't appear to hold out much home.
But then she starts to have sessions with Dr Anthony, a psychiatrist who's weirdly obsessed with White Fang, and gets a promotion at the factory so that now she's writing the fortunes to put in the cookies, life hints at the possibility of change. She tries to take some control for herself, but events dictate otherwise, and take her in an unexpected direction.
Anaita Wali Zada plays Donya as the calm, repressed centre of range of characters also trying to find their own answers. She holds in the traumas she has experienced in the war, and holds out this new world that she finds hard to navigate. The filming is intimate, lingering, allowing Zada time to give us hints of Donya's emotions behind the impassivity. The character has a deep strength that has survived much and will find her way to deal with this new environment.
As said above, nothing much happens. Yet the movie manages to give the audience themes of loneliness, displacement, women's right, culture clash, racism and, ultimately, love. The slow pace is a strength in getting to know Donya and understand her situation, and that she will find her own way to a better future.
Very satisfying, and definitely worth a watch.
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