Taking the Hollywood world by storm, the film Nomadland has swept this year’s award season, winning multiple Best Picture Honors. The film start Frances McDormand as a woman in her sixties, who loses everything and rebuilds her life as a modern American nomad in the American West. Nomadland was already nominated for 6 Academy Awards and 4 Golden Globe awards. Behind the scenes, perched on the director’s chair, is Chloé Zhao, winning Best Director at the Academy Awards.
Chloe Zhao, born Zhao Ting, is a Chinese filmmaker, director, screenwriter, and producer. Growing up in Beijing, alongside her father and stepmother, Zhao was rebellious, and intrigued in Western pop culture. At 14, Chloe Zhao attended boarding school in the UK before moving to finish high school in LA. She went on to attend a political science program, where she found that she had little interest in politics. Zhao worked odd jobs such as bartending and party promoting before studying Film Production at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
At NYU, Chloe Zhao studied under the tutelage of iconic director Spike Lee. \”What I like about Spike is that he doesn\’t really sugarcoat things,\” she told USA Today.
\”Spike will just tell you as it is and I really needed that. We used to have very heated discussions, where his assistant would come in and say, \’Everything OK?\’ But (it was) a lot of fun. It was always a great time.\”
In her final year of film school, Zhao found an interest in the Dakotas and the American West. Before Nomadland, Chloe Zhao created two movies, Songs My Brothers Taught Me and The Rider, starring nonprofessional actors playing their real selves. These two films were quiet, naturalistic films set in the West.
Nomadland, on the other hand, strayed a little from Chloe Zhao’s penchant for telling stories from a cast of nonprofessional actors, hiring experienced actor McDormand. However, the majority of the characters in Nomadland were played by nonprofessional actors who had lived life as a nomad. Consequently, the award-winning film has managed to encapture the beauty of simple life and blur the line between reality and fiction.
Zhao seeks to memorialize places that are disappearing or have already gone.
“I’ll pass through a small town in Nebraska that has a population of 18 people, and all I want to do is try to figure out from those people how they would want to be remembered, if their town were to disappear entirely. That impulse still drives me,” Zhao told Deadline.
Chloe Zhao now lives in Ojai, California, with her partner Joshua James Richards.
They met while studying at NYU, and together worked on Zhao’s first few films. They now live in a town in the Topatopa Mountains outside LA, called Ojai, raising two dogs and some chickens.
Just recently, Chloe Zhao was selected to sit on the jury of the upcoming Venice Film Festival. This prestigious film festival is held on the island of Lido in September, headed by Jury President Boon Joon Ho, director of the award-winning film Parasite in 2019.
Chloe Zhao is now directing the upcoming film Marvel Eternals film, starring Angelina Jolie and Kit Harington, set to release this November 5, 2021. Zhao, only in her thirties, has plenty of time to continue to make waves in the cinematic world.