PICK OF THE BEST FILMS

FRANCES McDormand stars opposite real people who live their lives on the road in the Oscar contender Nomadland. After a woman in her 60s loses everything in the 2008 recession, she embarks on a journey across the American West, living in her van.

She finds temporary and seasonal work, including at an Amazon warehouse, and discovers a community of other people living off the grid and on the road, from whom she learns basic survival and self-sufficiency skills, as well as a new appreciation for living.

Starring McDormand as Fern, it was adapted from Jessica Bruder’s bestselling nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. Many of the nomads who appear in the book also feature in the film as different versions of themselves. One of them is Charlene Swankie, who had no idea who McDormond was. Swankie, 78, who is an experienced kayaker and has been living on the road for more than a decade, was more concerned about getting an operation on her shoulder than about starring in a film.

“I’d never seen any of Frances’s movies and her name meant nothing to me,” she says frankly as she chats from inside her van.

Also featuring is 65-year-old Bob Wells, who after enduring divorce and the death of his son, found solace in a life on the road and has been a longtime proponent of transient living.

“They captured it perfectly, perfectly, I’m watching my life on the screen. And it just seemed so odd that my life would be on the screen, although it’s Frances as Fern living it.”

Nomadland is on Disney+ from Friday and in cinemas from May 17.

Charlene Swankie