Who is Chloé Zhao, the second woman crowned best director?



Chloé Zhao at the Deauville American Film Festival in 2015 – Lionel Cironneau / AP / SIPA

  • At the 93rd Academy Awards, Nomadland won three prestigious awards: best director for Chloé Zhao, best film and best actress, for Frances McDormand.
  • At 39, Chloé Zhao is the second woman to be named best director and the first Asian filmmaker to be recognized.
  • Fascinated by the American West, the filmmaker depicts in her films the daily life of the modest inhabitants of the great American spaces.

“From birth, people are inherently good.” Coming to retrieve her statuette on the stage of the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles this Sunday, April 24, Chloe Zhao moved in her acceptance speech by recalling this sentence in Mandarin that she had learned in her childhood.

The Chinese filmmaker created the feat at the 93rd Academy Awards by receiving the three most prestigious awards: best director, best film and best actress (for Frances McDormand) for her film Nomadland. This road movie follows a community of American nomads living in vans, left behind by the economic crisis and who are forging a new life in the American West.

With these distinctions, Chloé Zhao thus becomes the second woman to be crowned best director and the first Asian filmmaker to be recognized. Before her, Kathryn Bigelow, had obtained in 2010 the trophy for best feature film for her film Minesweepers.

Big favorite of this Hollywood award season, Nomadland had already won multiple awards around the world: the Golden Lion in Venice in 2020 as well as several awards at the British Academy Film Awards and Golden Globes this year.

Fascinated by the American West

Born in Beijing, Zhao Ting, her real name, left China when she was still a teenager to study in Los Angeles and New York. Assuming that she would not manage to make better films about New York than “those which had already been made”, the director discovered an attraction for the great sparsely populated American spaces like South Dakota or Nebraska.

Isolated areas that have a special place in the works of the filmmaker. In 2015, Chloé Zhao stages life on the Pine Ridge Native American reservation in her first feature film, The songs that my brothers taught me. Two years later, she unveils a portrait of a former rodeo champion trying to rebuild himself after a serious accident in The Rider. This year it is with Nomadland, taken from a book by Jessica Bruder, which the 39-year-old filmmaker celebrates the American West by recounting the journey of a nomadic community.

To continue in the tradition of success, the director will be at the helm of the 26th film in the Marvel saga, Eternals with a renowned cast: Angelina Jolie, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek… A project which should see the light of day in November 2021.



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