Filmmaker Chloé Zhao was born in Beijing, China, as Zhao Ting. She first gained recognition from festival audiences and critics for her early independent films made as a non-American outsider drawn to the characters, stories, and natural landscapes of the American West. Her first feature, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, is a coming-of-age story about Lakota siblings and was developed over the course of four years on the Pine Ridge reservation. Songs premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to screen at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors Fortnight in 2015.
Zhao returned to South Dakota to construct the narrative for her second film. The Rider centers on Brady Jandreau, a Lakota cowboy recovering from a life-altering rodeo injury. The film premiered at Cannes in 2017 and won the Art Cinema Award. After seeing this modern western drama, actor Frances McDormand sought Zhao at the Independent Spirit Awards and asked her to adapt, direct, and coproduce a movie based on Jessica Bruder’s journalistic book Nomadland. Zhao completed the film, her third feature, in 2020. In this American road movie, McDormand plays the fictionalized central character, Fern, a widow in her 60s who travels in her customized van, connecting with the real people and places described in the book. Nomadic van-dwellers serve as the heart of this soul-searching story of generational displacement, loss, and questioning of late capitalism.
Zhao is joined by Sheryl Mousley for a timely conversation about Zhao’s own personal “dialogue with filmmaking” and her process of self-discovery as an artist. Zhao discusses the evolution of her blurred fiction/nonfiction approach to storytelling and how she collaborates with others to portray realistic, multilayered, emotional worlds for audiences.
Mousley is former senior curator of Moving Image at the Walker Art Center (1998-2020). The Walker Art Center invited Mousley to return to the Cinema stage to conduct this virtual interview during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following month, Zhao made Hollywood history as the first woman of Asian descent to win the Oscar for Best Director at the 2021 Academy Awards. Her film Nomadland won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Actress (Frances McDormand). This conversation was recorded in 2021.
Chloé Zhao Dialogue with Sheryl Mousley
2021 | 1:08:19Chloé Zhao joins Sheryl Mousley for a conversation about her award-winning films and evolving career. Mousley is former senior curator of Moving Image at the Walker Art Center (1998–2020). During her tenure, Mousley’s contributions to the Dialogue and Retrospective series reflected her interest in the worldwide independent film movement. The Walker Art Center invited Mousley to return to the Cinema stage to conduct this interview during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2021. Chloé Zhao joins over sixty filmmakers featured in the Walker’s renowned Dialogue series of in-depth conversations between film artists, critics, and curators that began in 1990.
Transcript of Dialogue Introduction by Sheryl Mousley
We are at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for a Walker Dialogue with Chloé Zhao. As the cinema is still closed due to the ongoing COVID pandemic, this will be a virtual Dialogue with our guest joining from California. We will discuss her approach to humanist filmmaking at this dynamic moment in her career.
Chloé Zhao was born in Beijing, China. After moving to the United States, she attended Mt. Holyoke College and then continued her education in the graduate program in Film Production at New York University. As writer and director, Chloé will discuss her experimental approach to storytelling, combining personal stories with fictionalized characters.
Her first feature film, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, was shot on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015. It also went on to screen at the Cannes film festival Directors’ Fortnight and received a nomination for Best First Feature by the Film Independent Spirit Awards. I was pleased to show the film here at the Walker Cinema in 2016. Her second feature, The Rider, a contemporary western drama, premiered at Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight in 2017 and won the Art Cinema Award.
Her current feature is Nomadland, a road movie set in the American West. Chloé directs acclaimed actor Frances McDormand who plays van-dweller Fern, a displaced woman on a solitary quest for happiness following the loss of a life she once lived. Recently released via streaming and also in theaters as they reopen across the country, Nomadland has won numerous awards. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and played many others including Toronto and New York, and even in the Telluride Film Festival Drive-In Movie screening, as adaptations were made to present films during this year of virtual festivals. Chloé Zhao won Golden Globe awards for Best Picture and Best Director. The film is also nominated for Film Independent Spirit Awards and has been nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Director.
Chloé is now in production with Marvel Studios as writer and director of Eternals, to be released in November 2021.
The Walker’s Dialogue and Retrospective program is made possible by generous support from Anita Kunin and the Kunin Family
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