The new Marvel movie Eternals premiered this week and it is making waves for a star-studded cast that includes Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie (in a Marvel movie?!) as well as its direction by recent Oscar winner Chloe Zhao. So why not focus on Chloe today? Today's director for Female Filmmaker is Chloe Zhao.
Chloe Zhao was born and raised in Beijing, China as Zhao Ting. Her father was wealthy as an execute at Shougang Group, a steel company. Chloe's parents worked a lot and she considered herself a rebellious, artsy teen who spent her time drawing comics and writing fan fiction.
She also saw a lot of films which eventually inspired her to move by herself to Los Angeles as a teen and attend Los Angeles High School. While in America, she continued her studies in film at Mount Holyoke College and New York University and continued to inundate herself in American culture.
Chloe began her career with a series of short films like Post, The Atlas Mountains, Daughters, Benachin before she delved into feature film work.
Her debut film was Songs My Brothers Taught Me in 2015 which is a gorgeous indie drama that takes place on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota where members of the Lakota tribe live. The movie is primarily about a teen Lakota Sioux boy and his younger sister. He wants to move to LA (much like Chloe did!), but he doesn't want to abandon his sister on the reservation. The film offers a rare peek into life on a Native American reservation.
She followed that film up with the 2017 drama The Rider, which did not contain nudity. She changed that with her next film: Nomadland. This sweeping drama stars Frances McDormand as a nomadic worker who travels around the country in an RV. Much like her other two feature films, Nomadland shows off the modern American west through both its natural beauty and its struggling populace. She takes her time showing people working with their environment like when Frances goes full-frontal in a scene that showed her peacefully wading on her back in the water.
Chloe won the Academy Award for Best Director for this film making her the second woman in American movie history to win that award, and the fifth ever to be nominated. Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win Best Director for The Hurt Locker in 2009.
Chloe's movies take classic American tropes and shine a new light on them. Zhao clearly loves Western films and the influence of those is clear in her work. She does not condemn her subjects - Nomadland does not make a statement about nomadic living either way. She instead shares stories that do not often get shared.
Even though she is a decorated American filmmaker, Chloe is a Chinese national and her films have not been well-received in China. Because of comments, she made in Filmmaker magazine in 2013 about rebelling against Chinese culture as a teen because she said the government had "lies everywhere", her films have been met with heavy censorship in her homeland. Sadly, Eternals' Chinese release is not certain as the government is still keen on censoring Chloe's films.
It is clear that Chloe has talent and Hollywood is ready to put a lot of responsibility in her hands. She has a lot on the docket including a reimagining of the classic monster movie Dracula as well as a historical western about a U.S. Deputy Marshal who was Black. Who knows what she will do next? I know that I will be watching!
