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Fremont (2023) movie poster

Characters & Themes

Fremont (2023) Characters, Setting & Themes Explained

Release, runtime and language
2023 · 91 min · English
Echo score 80
JustWatch #4,585 17
Directed by
Babak Jalali
Starring
Siddique Ahmed, Anaita Wali Zada, Avis See-tho, Eddie Tang, Hilda Schmelling, Jennifer McKay
Budget
$3M

Donya, an Afghan translator navigating life in Fremont, California, discovers a sense of purpose when she's promoted to write fortunes at a local factory. This unexpected role sparks a desire to connect with others, leading her to send out enigmatic messages to strangers across the Bay Area. As her words resonate with people she doesn't know, Donya grapples with the impact of her actions and the uncertain consequences of reaching out to the world.

On this page (9)
  1. 1 Where to watch
  2. 2 Characters explained (7)
  3. 3 Where & when it takes place
  4. 4 Themes & meaning (3)
  5. 5 Character & meaning questions
  6. 6 Movie threads
  7. 7 Movies like Fremont
  8. 8 Categories
  9. 9 Every angle

Where to watch

Where to Watch Fremont (2023)

Where can you watch Fremont? Stream, rent or buy it in the US, including on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and MUBI: current JustWatch availability with up-to-date prices.

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7 main characters · contains spoilers

Fremont Characters Explained: Who Is Who

The main characters of Fremont (2023), heroes and villains: what drives them, how they change over the course of the story and what each of them reveals about the film's bigger ideas.

  • Donya (Anaita Wali Zada)

    Donya is an Afghan refugee living in Fremont who works at a fortune cookie factory. She suffers from insomnia and survivor's guilt after leaving Kabul, feeling isolated in a new country. Her journey involves therapy, slow social connections, and a tentative romance as she seeks sleep, belonging, and purpose.

    • 🧭 Refugee
    • 🫂 Loneliness
    • 🧠 Mental Health
    • 💬 Hope
  • Salim (Siddique Ahmed)

    Salim is Donya's Afghan neighbor who offers practical support and friendship. He provides her with a therapy appointment card and encourages her to pursue dates to break her isolation. His steadiness and generosity highlight the quiet resilience of a refugee community.

    • 🧭 Refugee
    • ☕ Hospitality
    • 🫶 Support
  • Fan (Avis See-tho)

    Fan is the older colleague who writes the fortunes at the factory. His sudden death triggers Donya's moment of responsibility and catalyzes her involvement in crafting fortunes. He embodies mentorship and community in the workplace.

    • 🗝️ Fortunes
    • 🫶 Mentor
    • 🕯️ Death
  • Lin (Jennifer McKay)

    Lin is Ricky's wife and a coworker at the fortune cookie factory who initially dislikes Donya. She is practical and sometimes stern, creating friction at work as Donya takes on new duties after Fan's death.

    • 🤝 Coworker
    • 🧭 Workplace
    • 🛍️ Authority
  • Ricky (Eddie Tang)

    Ricky is the kind and outgoing owner who supports Donya at work and defends her from potential firing. He fosters warmth in the workplace and embodies a welcoming attitude toward Donya’s integration.

    • 🎉 Boss
    • 💬 Support
    • 🫶 Kindness
  • Joanna (Hilda Schmelling)

    Joanna is Donya's coworker and neighbor who participates in daily life and helps fuel Donya's hope that someone will respond to her Fortune note. She offers friendship and a sense of shared humanity.

    • 👯‍♀️ Friend
    • 🗣️ Confidant
    • ✨ Hope
  • Daniel (Jeremy Allen White)

    Daniel is a warm auto shop owner who attracts Donya with his kindness. Their budding connection offers Donya a potential new start, aided by small moments of generosity like free coffee.

    • 🛠️ Mechanic
    • 💘 Attraction
    • 🤝 Kindness

Last updated: October 03, 2025 at 19:45

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Setting

Where and When Does Fremont Take Place?

The setting of Fremont (2023): the year and time period, the places and locations, and how they shape the characters, the mood and the tension of the story.

Time period

Location

Fremont, California, San Francisco, California, Bakersfield, California

Set primarily in Fremont, California, the story follows Donya's day-to-day life in a suburb of the Bay Area. It also features scenes in nearby San Francisco and a trip to Bakersfield as part of a pivotal meeting. Fremont serves as a quiet, immigrant-rich backdrop that contrasts with the turmoil in Donya's past.

  • 🗺️ Fremont area
  • 🏙️ Bay Area
  • 🛣️ Road trips
  • 🌍 Immigrant stories

Last updated: October 03, 2025 at 19:45

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3 major themes

Fremont Meaning: Themes & Message Explained

What is Fremont (2023) really about? The emotional, social and philosophical themes the film keeps returning to, its symbolism and the message beneath the surface.

  • Mental Health

    The film centers on Donya's struggle with insomnia and survivor's guilt after leaving Kabul. It presents therapy as a pathway to confronting trauma, while sleep deprivation and emotional fatigue reveal the fragility of recovery. The narrative uses intimate conversations and moments of vulnerability to explore what healing requires beyond medication, highlighting resilience and the complexity of seeking help in a new country.

  • Refugee Experience

    Donya's story is rooted in displacement and the challenge of building a new life after escaping danger in Kabul. The film shows the loneliness of starting over, the weight of threats back home, and the slow process of finding belonging through small acts of kindness. Communities of neighbors, coworkers, and friends become her lifelines as she navigates a system that often withholds support. The theme underscores dignity, memory, and the search for safety.

  • Connection

    Loneliness drives Donya to seek connection, from tentative workplace friendships to a budding romance with a kind mechanic. The film traces how opening up to others can bring comfort, even when fear and guilt linger. Small acts—like sharing a coffee, writing a number on a fortune, or accepting a deer statue—become bridges toward belonging and healing.

Last updated: October 03, 2025 at 19:45

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Character & theme questions

Fremont Characters & Meaning: Your Questions Answered

The questions people ask about Fremont (2023): who the characters really are, their relationships, what the symbols mean, where it takes place and what the movie is really about. Each answer contains spoilers.

Q1

Where is the movie Fremont set?

Fremont is primarily set in Fremont, California, a suburb in the Bay Area. The story also includes scenes in nearby San Francisco and a trip to Bakersfield. This quiet, immigrant-rich Bay Area setting contrasts sharply with the turmoil in Donya's past in Kabul, serving as a backdrop for her journey of starting over in America.

  • fremont california
  • bay area
  • setting
  • san francisco
  • bakersfield
Q2

Who is Donya in the movie?

Donya is an Afghan refugee living in Fremont, California, working at a fortune cookie factory. She struggles with insomnia and survivor's guilt after leaving Kabul. Her journey involves therapy, building slow social connections, and a tentative romance as she searches for sleep, belonging, and purpose in her new country.

  • donya
  • afghan refugee
  • protagonist
  • insomnia
  • survivor guilt
Q3

What does Fremont say about the refugee experience?

The film explores the challenges of displacement and building a new life after escaping danger. It shows the loneliness of starting over, the weight of threats back home, and the slow process of finding belonging through small acts of kindness. Communities of neighbors, coworkers, and friends become lifelines as Donya navigates a system that often withholds support.

  • refugee
  • displacement
  • immigration
  • Kabul
  • starting over
  • belonging
Q4

How does Fremont address mental health?

The film centers on Donya's struggle with insomnia and survivor's guilt after leaving Kabul. It presents therapy as a pathway to confronting trauma, while sleep deprivation and emotional fatigue reveal the fragility of recovery. The narrative explores what healing requires beyond medication, highlighting resilience and the complexity of seeking help in a new country.

  • mental health
  • insomnia
  • survivor guilt
  • therapy
  • trauma
  • healing
Q5

What role does connection play in Fremont?

Loneliness drives Donya to seek connection, from tentative workplace friendships to a budding romance with Daniel, a kind mechanic. The film traces how opening up to others can bring comfort, even when fear and guilt linger. Small acts, like sharing coffee, writing a number on a fortune, or accepting a deer statue, become bridges toward belonging and healing.

  • connection
  • loneliness
  • relationships
  • romance
  • community
  • belonging
Q6

What is the fortune cookie factory in the story?

The fortune cookie factory serves as Donya's workplace and a central symbol of her new life. When her colleague Fan dies, Donya is promoted to write fortunes, giving her a sense of purpose and a unique way to connect with strangers across the Bay Area. The factory represents both the mundane reality of immigrant work and the unexpected paths to meaning.

  • fortune cookie factory
  • workplace
  • mentorship
  • purpose
  • writing fortunes
Q7

Who is Salim in Fremont?

Salim is Donya's Afghan neighbor who offers practical support and friendship. He provides her with a therapy appointment card and encourages her to pursue dates to break her isolation. His steadiness and generosity highlight the quiet resilience of the refugee community in Fremont.

  • salim
  • neighbor
  • afghan community
  • friendship
  • support
Q8

Who is Daniel in the movie?

Daniel is a warm auto shop owner who attracts Donya with his kindness. Their budding connection offers her a potential new start, aided by small moments of generosity like free coffee. He represents the possibility of romantic hope and healing in her new life.

  • daniel
  • mechanic
  • romance
  • auto shop
  • kindness
  • new start
Q9

What is the tone of Fremont?

Fremont has a bittersweet tone, anchored by Donya's palpable loneliness and survivor guilt, which creates the 'bitter', but punctuated by small acts of kindness and the possibility of new connections, which creates the 'sweet.' The film is a quiet, observational character study with slow pacing that focuses on everyday moments and internal emotional shifts.

  • tone
  • bittersweet
  • character study
  • slow pacing
  • emotional
Q10

Why does Donya go to Bakersfield?

Donya takes a trip to Bakersfield as part of a pivotal meeting, representing one of her few departures from the Bay Area. This road trip highlights both the geographic distance she now travels in her new life and the broader scope of her attempts to connect with others beyond her immediate community.

  • bakersfield
  • road trip
  • bay area
  • meeting

Movie threads

More Movies Like Fremont, by Mood & Story

Curated lists built around what makes Fremont tick: the same mood, the same kind of story or the same emotional payoff. Each list explains why these movies belong together.

Movies about immigrant isolation like Fremont

Introspective character studies about the quiet loneliness of starting over in a new country. For viewers seeking movies like Fremont that explore the quiet, introspective side of the immigrant experience. These films share a focus on loneliness, cultural displacement, and the small, hopeful steps toward connection in an unfamiliar world.

  • lonely
  • contemplative
  • quiet
  • melancholic
  • hopeful
  • introspective
  • Tone: melancholic, contemplative, bittersweet
  • Pacing: slow, observational
Why these movies?

The story pattern: These stories often follow a linear, character-driven path, centering on a protagonist's internal journey as they navigate the mundane realities of a new life. The conflict is typically internal—a struggle with memory, identity, and isolation—rather than external, unfolding through subtle emotional shifts and moments of quiet reflection.

Why they belong together: Movies are grouped here for their shared focus on the emotional texture of immigration: the palpable sense of being an outsider, the weight of the past, and the tentative, often bittersweet, steps toward forging a new identity and finding small moments of human connection.

Movies with subtle acts of connection like Fremont

Stories where small, gentle gestures create ripples of hope and human connection. If you liked how Fremont finds hope in small gestures, this list features similar movies where quiet, introspective characters impact others through simple, unexpected acts, leading to bittersweet and hopeful stories about finding purpose.

  • hopeful
  • gentle
  • contemplative
  • tentative
  • quiet
  • introspective
  • Tone: bittersweet, hopeful, gentle
  • Pacing: slow, meandering
Why these movies?

The story pattern: The narrative pattern involves an isolated protagonist discovering a sense of agency through a small, often creative, action—like writing a letter, giving a gift, or performing a minor service. This action sends ripples into the world, creating unexpected connections and forcing the character to confront their own isolation in a new, more hopeful light.

Why they belong together: These films are united by a central theme: the transformative power of small, seemingly insignificant actions. They share a gentle pacing, a bittersweet tone, and a belief that meaning is often found not in dramatic resolutions, but in fragile, tentative moments of human contact.

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Movies Like Fremont

Similar movies to Fremont: the same genre, themes or kind of story. Each one comes with its own plot summary, timeline and ending explained.

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Categories

Movie Lists Featuring Fremont

Fremont appears in these hand-built movie categories. Each one groups movies by a specific mood, theme or story type, with their plot summaries and endings explained.

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Every angle

Fremont (2023) Explained: Plot, Timeline & Characters

Everything about Fremont in one place: what happens in the plot summary, the timeline in chronological order, the characters and meaning and a spoiler-free summary. What's After the Movie adds the cast, box office and post-credit scenes.

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