Three From Chloé Zhao
Run Time: TBD min.
About the filmmaker:
At the 93rd Academy Awards, Chloé Zhao became the first woman of color to win Best Director, and only the second woman to ever win the category. She was also the first woman to receive four Oscar nominations in a single year.
After growing up in China and England, she received her BA in political science from Mount Holyoke College and her MFA in film production from NYU. An empathetic storyteller, Zhao has always been deeply drawn to the experience of the outsider, and she often explores authentic stories through untrained actors from these marginalized communities.
“A singular filmmaker and one of the most important new voices in American cinema. Zhao seeks out characters living in the margins of society and on the periphery of movie heroism, and shows us why these seeming outcasts define America.”
– Cameron Bailey for Toronto International Film Festival
Before her historic wins this awards season for her third feature film, Nomadland, Zhao developed her distinct style crafting short films. She filmed her debut feature at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) premiered at Sundance and screened in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. Her second feature, the contemporary western The Rider (2017), premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight and won the Art Cinema Award.
The Gateway Film Center is one of only a few venues in the country to have screened all three of her critically acclaimed feature films, and we are thrilled to experience them again with you now.
The Program
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)
With an older brother in jail and living with their single mother on Pine Ridge Reservation, Johnny and his sister Jashaun’s lives develop new challenges when their absentee cowboy father suddenly dies. The loss prompts Johnny to strike out for Los Angeles, but would mean leaving behind his beloved sister.
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The Rider (2017)
After suffering a near fatal head injury, a young cowboy undertakes a search for new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.
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Nomadland (2020)
After losing everything in the Great Recession, a woman embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.
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