China Daily Global Edition (USA)
For Chinese director, Golden Globe Award culminates journey
For Chloé Zhao, the first woman of Asian descent to win the Best Director award in the 78-year history of Hollywood’s Golden Globes, it was about the road traveled.
Zhao accepted the prize via video at Sunday’s mostly virtual ceremony. She said the award “belongs to the whole Nomadland team” and thanked “everyone who made it possible for me to do what I love”. Her film Nomadland also won Best Movie Drama.
Only the second woman to win the Best Director Globe, Zhao spoke of the tough times that led her and others to the triumphant moment.
“Nomadland at its core for me is a pilgrimage through grief and healing, so for everyone who has come through this difficult and beautiful journey at some point in their lives, this is for you,” she said.
Many, including actors and critics, congratulated the director on social media.
“The film is patient, compassionate and open, motivated by an impulse to wander and observe rather than to judge or explain,” said The New York Times Arts in a tweet.
Barbra Streisand, the first woman to win a Best Director Golden Globe in 1984 for the drama Yentl, said in a Twitter post: “It’s about time! Congratulations Chloé! Well deserved!”
Korean-American actor Daniel Dae Kim wrote on Twitter, “Look out, Oscars, Chloe Zhao and # Nomadlandare a comin!” The awards put Nomadland in a strong position heading into the voting for the Academy Awards, which begins this week.
The 38-year-old filmmaker, whose Chinese name is Zhao Ting, was born in Beijing. Her father worked as a senior executive for a few state-owned enterprises and is now chairman of a real estate company in Beijing. Her stepmother is Song Dandan, a famous comedic actress in China.
“As a Chinese girl who didn’t speak English before she went to study abroad at 16, Zhao chose a path that we were once not optimistic about,” said Song, describing Zhao as a “legend” in her family.
Nomadland was adapted from a 2017 non-fiction book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the TwentyFirst Century. The film stars twotime Oscar winner Frances McDormand as an out-of-work woman who packs her van and sets off from her small town to travel the vast landscape of the American West, exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad.
Zhao’s awards for the movie include best director from the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Florida Film Critics Circle and Indiana Film Journalists Association.
The Palm Springs International Film Awards will honor Zhao with its Director of the Year award later this month. She is the first female director to receive that accolade in the 32 years the festival has been running.
The film also has earned six nominations, including Best Picture from the Hollywood Critics Association Film Awards. The film critics’ group will hold its awards ceremony virtually next month.
Earlier, the film had won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, making it the first film to get the top prize at both festivals.
Zhao’s first film, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, was shot when she was a thesis student at New York University. The Native American drama premiered in the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. It gave Zhao an Independent Spirit Awards nomination for Best First Feature.
In 2017, Zhao directed, wrote and produced her second film, The Rider. The Western film premiered in the 2017 Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight selection and won the Art Cinema Award.
For that film, she was nominated for Best Director and Best Feature at the 33rd Independent Spirit Awards and became the first recipient of the Bonnie Award, which recognizes “the innovative vision and breakthrough work of female directors”. The National Society of Film Critics honored it as its Best Film of 2018.
In her three films, non-actors were cast to play fictionalized versions of themselves. It’s a technique she originally adopted out of economic necessity after film school but one she has used often for its realism.
As a teenager, Zhao attended a boarding school in London. Four years later, she moved to Los Angeles. After earning a bachelor’s degree in political science at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, Zhao moved to New York City in 2010 and began studying in the graduate film program at NYU.
Building on her success, she will develop an original, futuristic scifi Western inspired by Dracula for Universal Pictures, according to Deadline.
Her next project is the highly anticipated Marvel Cinematic Universe Installment The Eternals. For that film, Zhao is expected to draw inspiration from her Chinese background and childhood experiences.
“I have such deep, strong, manga roots,” Zhao told The Hollywood Reporter. “I brought some of that into Eternals. And I look forward to pushing more of that marriage of East and West.”
Walt Disney’s 20th Century Studios has announced that Nomadland will be released on the Chinese mainland on April 23, via the country’s Nationwide Alliance of Arthouse Cinemas, an art film chain of 2,777 cinemas.
In a video statement released by Disney, Zhao said she was glad to hear that the film will be released in China.
“This movie has brought together the enthusiasm and hard work of many people, even their own life stories. I hope that through their stories, you (the Chinese audience) will find your own life and become the author of your own life story,” she said.
Hashtags about Zhao’s award have generated about 300 million views on Sina Weibo, with Nomadland obtaining 8.4 points out of 10 on Douban, a popular movie review aggregator in China.
Li Chao, a film critic based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, said Zhao is the first director from the Chinese mainland to receive such a high honor, making her win even more significant for local filmmakers.
Director Ang Lee from Taiwan has won the award twice, in 2000 for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and in 2005 for Brokeback Mountain.