Foreigner

FOREIGNER 🎒

Seeing a filmmaker’s career blossom in real time is what we are witnessing with writer/director Ava Maria Safai, who is going from making the award-winning short film Zip (2023) to now getting a world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival for her first feature film—FOREIGNER.

In Zip, we saw an Iranian girl struggle with the oppressive nature of her culture, but in FOREIGNER, Ava has cooked up a far more sinister tale that reimagines the world of Mean Girls like no other film I’ve ever seen.

This story follows an immigrant’s journey through the eyes of an Iranian teenage girl, who, after moving to Canada, struggles to navigate the culture shock of a new country and a home life that feels increasingly distant from her current reality.

With the watchful eyes of her father and grandmother weighing heavily on her and a newfound friendship with the popular girls at school, Yasamin is forced to balance the Iranian values she was raised with and the ‘empowering’ Canadian ideals around her—leading her down a dark abyss of loneliness that only she can pull herself out of.

It’s fun to have movies like Mean Girls, but we need more films like FOREIGNER.

When we normally get immigrant stories, it’s usually about blatant racism in a time period where the expectation was that, or the struggles of a family being in uncharted territories due to language barriers and the inability to connect with a new culture. FOREIGNER modernizes and reinvigorates those over-told stories by exploring the cause and effect of having an Eastern-influenced upbringing within a Western culture during the 2000s, where pop-culture obsession was the gateway to understanding and acceptance.

Speaking of roots, the Canadian film industry tends to favour Maritime and Prairie stories when in reality modern Canada has evolved so far past that, with FOREIGNER being a prime example of that growth. Ava has such a distinct vision that deviates from the traditional Western lens and claims ownership over a new generation of Canadian stories that will powerfully resonate with the right audience. From movies like Anthony Shim’s Riceboy Sleeps to FOREIGNER, these are the Canadian coming-of-age stories that showcase the evolution of Canada as a country and as a people.

FOREIGNER is a pointed depiction of the harsh reality of cultural conformity and the erasure of self for the sake of mass acceptance in post-millennium Canada. 

Enjoy!

7.1/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 1hr22mins

Where: The 2025 Fantasia Film Festival.

Foreigner Review (2025) The Richmond Reviewer - August 3rd, 2025.

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