Chloé Zhao has won the Oscar for Best Director for her film Nomadland at the 93rd annual Academy Awards, becoming the first woman of color to win the award and the second woman to win (Katheryn Bigelow was the first). Zhao was also the first woman to get four Oscar nominations in a single year, in the Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture categories. Nomadland is about a widow in her 60s (Frances McDormand) who travels the Western United States in a van after losing her job in the Great Recession.
“I have been thinking a lot lately of how I keep going when things get hard,” she said onstage during her speech. “And I think it goes back to something I learned when I was a kid. When I was growing up in China, my dad and I used to play this game. We would memorize classic Chinese poems and texts, and we would recite it together and try to finish each other’s sentences.” Variety reports Zhao was inspired by the phrase “人之初，性本善,” which comes from the foundational Chinese text “The Three Character Classic” and translates to: “People, at birth, are inherently good.”
“Those six letters had such a great impact on me when I was a kid,” Zhao continued. “And I still truly believe them today, even though sometimes it may seem like the opposite is true. But I have always found goodness in the people I met — everywhere I went in the world.”
Upon entering the media suite, Zhao remarked that the film changed her. “I think I need less stuff to live, for sure,” she said. “I feel like I just need a few things.”
As CNN notes: “Zhao being celebrated as an auteur during a time of rising anti-Asian hate is also noteworthy. In the US, almost 3,800 hate incidents were reported between March 2020 and the end of February 2021, according to the organization, Stop AAPI Hate. While her accolades, of course, cannot erase anti-Asian racism, by winning the Oscar for Best Director she will garner more influence and visibility for the Asian community in the US movie industry that has long marginalized it.”
“I think for Asian filmmakers and for all filmmakers, we have to stay true to who we are and we have to tell the stories we feel connected to,” Zhao told the media after her win when asked about winning in the current climate. “We shouldn’t feel that there is only a certain type of story that we have to tell. [Filmmaking] is a way for us to connect with other people, that’s why I love fil making… As Halle Berry said [tonight], let’s get together and stop hate – hate for anybody.”
Nomadland is the 39-year-old Zhao’s third feature film, following 2015’s drama Songs My Brothers Taught Me and 2017’s Western The Rider. Her next movie is Marvel’s superhero epic Eternals, which is due in theaters this November.
