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| Anaita Wali Zada as Donya in Fremont. Babak Jalali: 'I grew up around a lot of Afghan women and the ones I met were fiercely independent, very mighty and very powerful' Photo: Music Box Films |
This is the first time you and Carolina Cavalli have collaborated on a script, can you tell me a bit about working together.
Babak Jalali: Yes, it's the first time we've collaborated on a script, although I edited her feature film Amanda. It's a very pleasant experience, but also very peculiar in that we didn't sit, for example, on the computer, and just type or she does scenes and I do scenes kind of thing. We travelled to Fremont a few times, spent some time there and also we just sat down and thought of different scenarios and separate scenes and gave each character, let's say, a job or something to - much of the film was about atmosphere.
So you went to Fremont? I was going to ask you about the research you did.
BJ: My second feature film Radio Dreams was also shot in the Bay Area. But at that point, I didn't know about the city of Fremont. Of course, I knew Berkeley and San Francisco and Oakland and San Jose, and those places, but I didn't even know Fremont existed. Until some of the cast members in Radio Dreams who are Afghan told me that there is a city next door called Fremont, which is home to the biggest Afghan population in America. I've had a strong sense of affinity with Afghan people my whole life, being Iranian, we have a huge Afghan population in Iran. When I was growing up, to the age of eight, I was around them a lot, and when I lived abroad. We share a language with a large proportion of the country and have shared history and traditions.
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| Anaita Wali Zada and Gregg Turkington in Fremont. Babak Jalali on Turkington working with Zada: 'He was just good as gold with her and he was just so patient and so understanding and so impressed by her as well' Photo: Music Box Films |
So I went to Fremont just to have Afghan food. And then I went around, to different places and I found out about the presence of a lot of former translators there. And then later, I read an article that was from a local paper in Sacramento, northern California, that also talked about the translators there. And for most of the ones I spoke to in Fremont, the situation was quite grim. Because they were resettled in Fremont but once there, they were kind of left alone. And it's a bit tricky for them amid the Afghan community, because a lot of people were not appreciative of the work they did because they consider them sellouts. And I’m not strictly talking about people who are pro-Taliban, I'm talking about people who were fighting the Taliban even. But almost all of the translators didn’t do it for any kind of moral reason; they did it because it was a job. It was paid work in a place where such things were scarce. And also, it was a way out; they could get a visa to come.
I feel like the irony of that is, certainly in the UK that for many of those who thought they were getting a way out, in fact, it's proved not to be the case.
BJ: Absolutely. Exactly. So many of them were left behind and it's shambolic how they were treated, and how they're still being treated. So almost all the ones we spoke to were men, but we knew there were also female translators. One thing that has always stuck out to me was that the portrayal of Afghan women in the media and in films has almost always exclusively been focused on the oppression, which is very real, and there’s no denying that.
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| Director Babak Jalali: 'I've had a strong sense of affinity with Afghan people my whole life, being Iranian' |
In terms of what she does in the day, that’s also quite unusual, to work in a fortune cookie factory.
BJ:The idea of working in the fortune cookie factory is entirely Carolina’s, so all credit to her because when we visited a fortune cookie factory I was gobsmacked by the visuals. So as a director, I thought, “Oh my God, this will look beautiful on film”, in a very superficial way.
It’s the same machinery they've been using for 50 years and it just looked really stunning. So I was super excited. I was like, “Oh my god, we have to shoot scenes here”. Then Carolina said, “You know, what if the character works in a fortune cookie factory?” I thought it was an odd suggestion. But she said, “You know, the film is about the idea of possibilities, essentially, you know, and fortune cookies, more often than not are nonsense, but I think sometimes you get these nuggets that make you think and you kind of save them and it just lingers in your mind.” They seldom promise you glory or anything like that but it alludes to the wonders of possibility.
Did you both work on the fortunes yourselves, or were you eating a lot of Chinese food?
BJ: A mixture of both. What was really interesting to me was, before, I thought these fortune messages were mass produced in some place like where they make greeting cards. But actually they do it in the factory like that they do the cutting up of the fortunes and the process is exactly like that.
I was surprised to hear Vashti Bunyan showing up as well, not least because I realised I knew the words.There must be something about children born in the 70s that this just goes in our DNA or something. But it can be quite tricky to get the rights to specific songs and I wondered whether that was the one you always intended to use.
BJ: Yes, it was. I'm a big fan of Vashti Bunyan and that song in particular, as I've always had it in my head. All things told. I'm far more influenced by music than I am by films, generally. It is incredibly tricky to get the music right and sometimes there have been times in my films where I have not gotten it right and it shows. But in this instance, we had it in mind for the film and our producer Rachael Fung approached her management company and them being a management company, there's a lot of going back and forth. Then Vashti Bunyan herself wrote to Rachel, and said, “The story sounds really cool. You can use the song, if you have problems with my management, let me know”.
Perfect. It's interesting, because Vashti Bunyan went on our own little Odyssey to make that album. So it does fit.
BJ: Exactly. So she was good as gold in letting us have it. And the character Joanna, who sings it, was a role we wrote for Hilda Schelling, who was the set decorator on my second film. I remember watching her at work in between shots, where she's moving things around. And she was just so precise, and just so very focused and she hardly said anything. Then at the wrap party we went to a karaoke bar in Berkeley and she went on and she belted out a Pat Benatar song. It was completely stunning and from that moment, I knew I was going to have her sing in a karaoke scene somehow.
It’s good to talk about the cast because it is quite unusual, as your lead had never acted before either.
BJ: My previous films were predominantly made with non-professional actors and actresses. This is a mixture of professionals and professionals. But for the lead, we did an open casting call on social media and also through Afghan community centres in America. I video called with young Afghan women all around the country and most of them were second generation Afghans. And it got to a place where I was getting worried and then Anaita sends an email saying, “Hello, I'm an Anaita, I'm 22 years old, I left Afghanistan on an evacuation flight, when the Taliban returned five months ago with my oldest sister, the rest of my family and six siblings are in Afghanistan. I've never acted before. My English is not great. But I'm interested.”
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| Anaita Wali Zada and Jeremy Allen White as Donya and Daniel in Fremont. Babak Jalali on the first two days of the shoot: 'Anaita was thrown into the deep end and she gained a lot of confidence acting across from Jeremy those first two days' Photo: Music Box Films |
And then you've got like Gregg Turkington, who's quite well known.
BJ: I've been a big fan of Gregg Turkington’s work for a long time, whether it's his work in Rick Alverson’s films or his character Neil Hamburger or his work on cinema. To be fair I was a bit intimidated because I thought he's just going to be one of those people who is going to be impossible to communicate with because the characters usually portrays are very strange. But he's the kindest, most gentle human being. And he came and he knew the situation with Anaita, that she'd never acted before - they had the most scenes together - and he was just good as gold with her and he was just so patient and so understanding and so impressed by her as well.
That was added to the fact that Anaita’s first two days of the shoot were across from Jeremy Allen White. who, again, was such a kind hearted man. Anaita was thrown into the deep end and she gained a lot of confidence acting across from Jeremy those first two days.
And finally, tell me about the dedication for the film, to your producer.
BJ: Marjaneh Moghimi was a producer of my second film Radio Dreams and we became very close friends. We always talked about doing another film together in the Bay Area, which ended up being Fremont. We were supposed to shoot Fremont, in August 2020 but because of the pandemic, it had to be postponed. And, of course, besides the pandemic, in Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban returned. And in January 2022, so a year and a half ago, I was in Rome editing Carolina’s film Amanda, when I got a call from Marjaneh saying she was very unwell. So with the other producers, we hustled to get the film going so we could show it was being made because it was a very dear project to her. She really dedicated several years of her life to it. And so as soon as I finished editing in March 2022, I went to Oakland, and we started prepping. Unfortunately, 10 days before the shoot, she passed away but she got to know we were making the film, and two of the last things I asked her was showing her Anaita’s picture and saying I was going to shoot in black and white, so I got a thumbs up for that.
Fremont is released in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 15
