Fremont to close Edinburgh Film Festival 2023
The curtain will come down on the 2023 Edinburgh International Film Festival with the immigration tale Fremont from Iranian-British filmmaker Babak Jalali
Edinburgh International Film Festival has already announced it’ll open with the Scottish drama Silent Roar. Today it reveals its closing film: Babak Jalali’s dryly funny Fremont.
The film follows troubled twenty-something Donya, an Afghan immigrant who was previously a translator for the US army back in Kabul, but was forced to flee her homeland. Now she has a new job writing the messages on fortune cookies at a small, family-owned fortune cookie factory in the Californian city of the title. We're told that "as her messages begin to be read by those throughout Fremont, her growing sense of longing drives her to send a more profound statement out to the world."
Shot in black and white, with a bone-dry sense of humour, Jalali’s film has been compared to the work of deadpan humanist Jim Jarmusch. Donya is played by former TV journalist Anaita Wali Zada, who, like her character in the film, was forced to flee Afghanistan. Elsewhere in the cast you’ll find The Bear star Jeremy Allen White, comedian Gregg Turkington and Sorry to Bother You director Boots Riley.
"Our programming team was totally captivated by Fremont’s mood, style and subtlety,” says EIFF programme director Kate Taylor, “and adored both the character of Donya and the tender care shown by director Babak Jalali towards his layered protagonist. It’s an honour to close this year’s festival with a film that considers the complex dynamics of diaspora experience in such a nuanced way, whilst frequently delighting with its wry wit and off-beat humour.”
Edinburgh International Film Festival runs 18-23 Aug. The full EIFF programme will be revealed on 6 Jul