Chloé Zhao has recently made history as the first woman of Asian descent to ever be nominated for, let alone win, a Golden Globe award for best director. Nomadland, Zhao’s landmark win for Best Motion Picture Drama stars Frances McDormand.
Here is everything you need to know about the Beijing-Born director:
1. WHO IS CHLOÉ ZHAO?
Born in Beijing as Zhao Ting, Zhao was a rebellious child. The daughter of a top executive at a successful steel company, and a hospital worker, she was a poorly performing student with big dreams. Zhao attended boarding school at the age of 14 in the U.K. before permanent relocation to the U.S. Not deterred by a lacklustre academic record, Zhao ended up as a thesis student at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. This began the path towards her first feature length film, Songs My Brothers Taught Me which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2015.
2. WHAT OTHER FEATURE FILMS HAS ZHAO DIRECTED?
“Nomadland” is the recent winner of a highly coveted Golden Globe. It’s predated by Zhao’s 2015 Songs My Brothers Taught Me and The Rider, which drew widespread attention in 2017.
3. WHO IS SHE DATING?
Joshua James Richards, is her D.O.P and right-hand man.
Having grown up in Cornwall, England, Richards feels an affinity to nature.
In the years following their meeting at NYU, they’ve created three films. These films are where this exploration of the spiritual and nature has combined.
In recent times, Richards has called-out Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs) for slamming digital cinematography. At a 2014 press conference for the Cannes Film Festival, Tarantino said:
“As far as I’m concerned, digital projection is the death of cinema. The fact that most films aren’t presented in 35mm means that the world is lost. Digital projection is just television in cinema.”
Richards sprung to Zhao’s defence and argued that digital filming enables lower-budget films to be made. This, he argues, is necessary in a modern world.
“Tarantino says digital is the death of cinema. Fuck you, man. Chloé could get no backing, because she’s a Chinese woman. With digital, we could make our own movies for a hundred thousand dollars at the level they could be shown as cinema.”
Source: IndieWire
And what does the pair’s day-to-day life look like?
“The pandemic has kept the self-described nomad at home in Southern California with her partner; their mutts, Taco and Rooster; and three chickens, Red, Cebe, and Lucille. Zhao says she’s been cooking, cleaning, and avoiding the treadmill in the corner.”
Source: Vanity Fair
4. WHERE DOES HER INSPIRATION COME FROM?
“I’ve always been an outsider,” she says. “I’m drawn to outsiders.”
Source: Vanity Fair
Growing up in Beijing, Zhao dreamed of western pop culture, yearning to visit England and New York. Whilst in New York, she was infatuated with the South Dakota landscape she saw in National Geographic. This fascination led her to the Native American reservation, where she shot her first movie, 2015’s Songs My Brother Taught Me.
Zhang recounts;
“Having lived in big cities my whole life, there was a good five years where I was on the road and that’s when my relationship with nature developed, and sometimes it’s through other people’s perspective, like Brady [Jandreau, the subject and star] in ‘The Rider,’ what does nature and animals mean to him,” said Zhao. “I think I channelled some of that through ‘Nomadland,’ and Frances [McDormand] always said, ‘The older I got, the closer I want to be to dirt that I’m going to go back in.’ So I’m listening to that, and thinking about what that means, and someone said to me recently, when things get really bad for human beings, there is a natural desire to go back into nature, it’s in our DNA, everything will be okay over there, there’s a rhythm of things that has been there forever, it’s not our home or technology, because these things are too new.”
Source: IndieWire
5. WHAT’S NEXT?
Amazon green-lit Zhao’s Bass Reeves biopic in 2018; a historical western about the first black U.S. Deputy Marshal. Later in the same year, Marvel studios hired her to direct Eternals. Based on the comic book characters of the same name, it’s set to be released in November 2021.
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