Women in Hollywood: A celebration of Chloe Zhao’s historic precedent

Chloé Zhao made history at the 78th Annual Golden Globe Awards by becoming the second woman—and first Asian woman—to win the Best Director award for her prescient, hypnotic film, Nomadland.

The precedent-setting night continued with Nomadland deservedly winning for Best Motion Picture – Drama, the first female-directed movie to accomplish the feat.

As part of our series on Woman in Hollywood who are changing the landscape of the industry, I’d like to take a moment to celebrate the significance of Chloé Zhao’s historic example.

If 2020 was a banner year for women directors, we can now celebrate 2021 as the year they’re finally getting just recognition. Instead of regarded as the occasional one-off nominee, women directors finally outnumbered their male counterparts.

Rather than just include a token nod to women filmmakers (“see, we got you nominations”), one of the three extremely talented ladies (Zhao, Regina King, and Emerald Fennell ) pulled through with the breakthrough win.

After seeing the nominees, there was only one frontrunner for me. Nomadland is a stunningly inspiring film that deftly weaves in real people (who told their stories in the original novel, amazingly so) with an enriched, nuanced performance from Frances McDormand as the resourceful Fern.

Zhao entwines stark reality in a story that also bakes in the heart and hope embodied in Fern. It’s a testament to the human soul, but it’s also a poignant, cautionary tale of the devaluing of that American soul.

Chloé Zhao joins Barbara Streisand (Yentl) as a director Golden Globe-winner. In its 77 years, the awards show has only bestowed eight nominees, three of them this year. Is it any wonder that we’ve been complaining about the lack of diversity?

Despite that controversy (and the fact that there are zero black members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which votes for those awards), diversity was a big winner anyway, The late Chadwick Boseman,  as well as British actors Daniel Kaluuya and John Boyega took home awards. Pixar’s Soul won both Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score.

The annual Golden Globes ceremony kickstarts awards season. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out for the upcoming (virtual) red-carpet events. Nomadland is sure to continue to dominate the awards circuit.

At any rate, with the plethora of female directors breaking through across the entertainment industry, the current threshold of eight GG nominees will certainly expand, with such a flourishing talent pool of women. I’ll leave it in the words of Chloé Zhao in her acceptance speech to demonstrate the joyful weight of all this progress,

Quoting one of her non-actor compatriots from Nomadland, Bob Wells, she said:

"“‘Compassion is a breakdown of all the barriers between us, a heart-to-heart bonding. Your pain is my pain, it’s  mingled and shared between us.’ Now this is why I fell in love with making movies and telling stories, ’cause it gave us a chance to laugh and cry together. And it gives us a chance to learn from each other and to have more compassion for each other. So, thank you, everyone, who made it possible for me to do what I love.”"

Nomadland is available to stream on Hulu. If you haven’t seen this film yet, do yourself a favor, and take it in. It’s a rare treasure.

What did you think of the Golden Globe winners? Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts.