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About Chloé Zhao, China-born director of Nomadland – an Oscars hope after Venice win – who’s directing Marvel’s Eternals with Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek
- Zhao could become the first Asian woman to be nominated for a best director Oscar after her film Nomadland won the Golden Lion at the 2020 Venice Film Festival
- Of Nomadland, she says: ‘I want my family in China … to be related to these characters. And to do that, I have to focus on human stories that are universal’
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With Nomadland, just her third film, Chinese-born director Chloé Zhao has truly landed on the international stage.
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Perfectly judged, it tells the story of Fern (Frances McDormand), a widower who travels the American heartlands in her beat-up white van. Nomadland attracted such glowing reviews from critics that when it was awarded the 2020 Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion last week, it felt almost a formality.
Zhao’s film is certain to feature at next year’s Oscars, and she may well become the first Asian woman to be nominated in the best director category.
The last Chinese director to scoop Venice’s top prize was Jia Zhangke for 2006’s Still Life ; before that, it was Zhang Yimou, twice, for Not One Less (1999) and The Story of Qiu Ju (1992). But Nomadland feels markedly different from those Chinese-language films.
Zhao, only the fifth woman ever to win the Golden Lion, was born Zhao Ting in Beijing in 1983. Her father was a wealthy steel-company manager; her mother worked in a hospital and featured in a performance troupe for the People’s Liberation Army.
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