A young woman in a hairnet observes as a light-coloured batter drips from a nozzle onto a hot, moving tray. The small dollops quickly spread, baking into delicate circles, before gloved hands peel them from the conveyer, ready to press and mould them. A thin strip of paper bearing the telling phrase “now is a good time to explore” is folded into one of the pliable shells. The completed fortune cookie is neatly lined up with its batch, where it waits to be packaged and distributed to strangers. So begins Babak Jalali’s endearing and arresting feature Fremont—a film in which even pithy, impersonal messages encased in wafer have the potential “to act on the flux of things.”

This factory, in which the creation of fortunes is a routine part of daily proceedings, is the workplace of Fremont’s protagonist, 20-something Donya (Anaita Wali Zada, assured and indelible in her first acting role), an Afghan refugee and former translator recently resettled in California. It’s a setting which sweetly expounds the films inclination to look to Donya’s future, rather than linger on a past that keeps her from sleeping at night. Speaking over Zoom, Jalali shares that it was Fremont’s co-writer Carolina Cavalli, director of Amanda (2022), who first suggested making use of the factory in this way: “Carolina was saying [that] it’d be interesting if Donya works there because the film is essentially about the idea of possibilities, and that’s what fortune cookies are. […] They allude to possibilities.”

Jalali was born in Iran and moved to London at a young age. His graduate film at the London Film School, Heydar, an Afghan in Tehran (2005), was nominated for Best Short at the 2006 BAFTAs. His debut feature, Frontier Blues (2009), was set in the north of Iran, on its border with Turkmenistan, while his second, Radio Dreams (2016), shifted focus to the Iranian diaspora in the United States, following a Persian-language radio station in San Francisco. With his fourth film, Jalali returns to the Bay Area, to the city of Fremont, which is known to have the largest Afghan population in the country. Within this setting, Jalali was drawn to the hopeful narrative thread of a young woman opening herself up to the possibilities of life—an approach which differs, the director explains, from a ubiquitous “focus on the grimness, the bleak element” of immigrant experiences. “Those types of films kind of place an emphasis on the audience to pity the characters they’re watching, and it has the effect of dehumanising the characters,” Jalali says. “An immigrant is first and foremost a human being, with the same basic emotions as someone who is a native, and I wanted to show that.”

For the lead role, which required a native Dari speaker, Jalali conducted an open casting call. “My previous three films were made almost entirely with non-professional [actors], so I was used to the idea of working with non-professionals. […] Also, it’s a reality that the pool of Afghan professional actresses in America is minimal.” One of the applicants was the then 22-year-old Zada, who had left Afghanistan on an evacuation flight around six months prior. Jalali remembers meeting Zada over video call. “The way she presented herself, this mixture of melancholy and humour, was really special. Then she started telling me her story—it wasn’t too dissimilar from the character of Donya. Anaita wasn’t a former translator, but she had recently left her home country, left her family behind, and she was starting from scratch.”

Fremont’s supporting cast is also largely comprised of local, non-professional performers. Among them is Eddie Tang, charming in the role of Donya’s good-natured boss. “He’s incredible,” says Jalali of Tang. “Eddie’s based in the Bay Area. In retirement he started dabbling in acting.” Instead of holding auditions, Jalali invited prospective actors to send a two-minute video talking about a childhood experience. “His was completely hilarious […] then we met him, and he was just, first of all a thoroughly decent human being, but also just a really relaxed presence on camera.”

Not all the casting was done through these submissions, however. Hilda Schmelling—who plays Donya’s co-worker Joanna and provides both a memorable musical interlude and some of the film’s most disarmingly funny line readings—was the set decorator on Radio Dreams. “I remember on that shoot […] she was so focused on what she was doing […] she didn’t really interact with anyone,” Jalali recalls. “Then at the wrap party, we went to a karaoke bar and everyone was drunkenly singing awfully, and then Hilda took the microphone and started belting out a song […] everyone was just frozen because she was so incredible, so when we started writing this film, I had her in mind for the role of Joanna.”

Alongside these first-time actors, Fremont’s cast is rounded out by Gregg Turkington—whom Jalali describes as “someone I’ve been a fan of for years”—as Donya’s White Fang obsessed therapist, and The Bear star Jeremy Allen White, in a small but tender appearance. Jalali discusses contacting White upon the recommendation of his friend Antonio Campos, who had directed the actor in one of his earliest films roles (2008’s Afterschool). “Five days before the shoot, we hadn’t cast this role, so I called Antonio freaking out […] he goes ‘why don’t you call Jeremy?’ I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous; he’s never going to do this.’”

After reading the script, White quickly agreed to the part and drove up to San Francisco within a few days, becoming Zada’s very first scene partner. “The first two days of the shoot were the scenes with Anaita and Jeremy.” “She was thrown in at the deep end,” he goes on, “but I think that gave her the confidence for the rest of the shoot.” Jalali commends White’s “total understanding” of what the situation required of him, placing value on the real-life personalities of the actors he chooses to work with. “You can do whatever you want on a professional level, but I think if you just have thoroughly incredible human beings who relate to the roles doing the part, it’s more than half the job done.”

A veritable mood piece, Fremont is distinguished by its jazz-inflected score and striking, black-and-white cinematography by Fremont native Laura Valladao. “There’s something quite special about doing something in your hometown, especially if you’re not living there anymore,” says Jalali. “There were so many locations she knew from childhood.” The director describes the instinct to shoot in black-and-white as “a purely visceral reaction; there was nothing intellectual or metaphorical about it.” Valladao supported the idea, which gave Jalali the confidence to take it to the producers. Meanwhile, Fremont’s music was composed by Mahmood Schricker, who previously collaborated with Jalali on Radio Dreams. “His main instrument is an Iranian three-stringed instrument called the setar… but he’s very innovative in the way he uses this instrument.” “It doesn’t feel too traditional,” continues Jalali, “it’s much more expansive than that. And also bringing on the two other instruments, which usually are not played along with the setar, which is the French horn and upright bass.” Schricker was married to the late Marjaneh Moghimi—a producer on both Fremont and Radio Dreams who Jalali remembers as “a dear friend.” “We started this project together, unfortunately Marjaneh passed away ten days before we started shooting, so Mahmood was very much emotionally invested in the film,” he says. “I think that really shows in the way he did the music as well.”

Towards the end of our conversation, Jalali acknowledges that he has been doing press for Fremont for some 15 months at this point. There must be a degree of tedium that comes with this, but his manner is open and genuine. He speaks with gratitude about Fremont’s international sales agent, Memento, which has facilitated distribution in several territories. “I’m really excited the film is going to be released in Australia; it’s the first film of mine that’s getting a theatrical release over there,” Jalali begins. “It’s very exciting and surprising, because […] in this day and age it’s becoming more and more difficult, getting things out in the cinemas […] it was something we really wanted, instead of the film getting straight to streamers.”

Reflecting on those that have inspired his work, Jalali speaks especially of Iranian filmmaker Sohrab Shahid-Saless (“he made two films in and around my hometown, seldom seen, but he is incredible”) and Fallen Leaves director Aki Kaurismäki, who Jalali commends for his “graceful and humorous” rendering of “loneliness and people on the periphery of society.” Like Kaurismäki’s work, Fremont finds a certain magic in the passage of normal daily activities. “It’s very interesting if you can show routine without making it seem mundane,” Jalali reflects. “In those everyday moments, something spectacular is possible.”

Fremont is now showing across Australia.

**********

Grace Boschetti is a Melbourne-based freelance film critic. She has written for Metro, Senses of Cinema, and ScreenHub, among other publications.