Her job as interpreter is now done and dusted and we join the story later on, as she leads a dull and uneventful life in Fremont within a small community of other people from Afghanistan. She goes to work for a Chinese family who make Fortune Cookies and ends up writing the 'fortunes' that go inside them.
Suddenly deciding that life is far too dull, she grabs the opportunity she has at work to put an appeal into one of the cookies to see if she could get a response from someone and hook up for love, encouraged by her very funny work colleague. A bit of a long-shot, but she gets a result of sorts and starts down the road of livening things up for herself.
While she reflects on her life, much of it is about the guilt of having left her family behind in Afghanistan, certainly her loneliness in the foreign land and more. She eventually opens up about this to a psychiatrist, who she goes to, to get sleeping pills. He wants to make her work hard for them by talking about her frustrations and life.
Unknown Anaita Wali Zada plays Donya beautifully well, reserved, quiet, shy, unconfident as she starts to find her wings. Gregg Turkington, who is apparently an Australian comedian, plays the medic very nicely - and much humour is injected into the storyline and character delivery and development.
It's clearly an arthouse piece, shot in black and white, in 4:3, and reminded me in style of Cuarón's Roma. It's beautifully imagined and directed by Babak Jalali, the performances are super and it's well worth a watch while it's doing the rounds just now on various streaming platforms. Charming, classy and fun.
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