Only five women have ever been nominated for Best Director in the 93-year history of the Academy Awards. Previously only “The Hurt Locker’s” Kathryn Bigelow had actually won the award. She’s no longer alone in that honor after “Nomadland’s” Chloe Zhao took the Best Director win at the 2021 Oscars Sunday evening.
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Zhao had previously made history as just the first woman of Asian descent to earn a Best Director nomination. She also was nominated the first year that multiple women were recognized at the same time. She was joined by “Promising Young Woman’s” Emerald Fennell.
The Bejing, China native earned four nominations overall including Editing, Adapted Screenplay, and, as a producer, Best Picture.
Previous women nominated for Best Director include Lina Wertmüller for “Seven Beauties,” Jane Campion for “The Piano,” Sofia Coppola for “Lost in Translation” and Greta Gerwig for “Lady Bird.”
Adapted from Jessica Bruder‘s non-fiction novel “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century,” Zhao’s film follows Fern (Best Actress nominee Frances McDormand) a sixty-something widow who has turned her van into a home as she travels across the American West taking one temporary job after another. Zhao worked with recognizable faces such as McDormand and David Strathairn as well as non-professional actors from the nomad community such as Linda May and Charlene Swankie. The Searchlight Pictures release went to theaters and debuted at Hulu near the height of the pandemic.
Remarkably, Zhao won every Best Director honor she was nominated for including the Golden Globe, the BAFTA Award, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the prestigious DGA Award. As a producer, she won the PGA Award and as a screenwriter, she took the USC Scripter Award honor. She also won the Golden Lion at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. Critics groups who honored her for Best Director included the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Boston Society of Film Critics, and the Chicago Film Critics Association, among others.
Zhao also becomes the first Oscar-winning director to helm a Marvel Studios release. “Eternals” will hit theaters later this year on November 5. Her previous films included 2015’s “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” and 2017’s “The Rider.”