Nomadland’s Chloé Zhao Becomes First Woman of Color to Win an Oscar for Best Director

Nomadland’s Chloé Zhao became the first woman of color to win an Oscar for Best Director on Sunday night — and is only the second woman to ever win the coveted award. 

Nomadland is based on Jessica Bruder’s book of the same name, starring Frances McDormand as Fern, whose entire community was forced to move after a gypsum plant that fueled the town shut down.

Zhao both wrote and directed the film, thanking the other nominees and those who worked on the film with her when she accepted the award, adding, “What a crazy once-in-a-lifetime journey we went on. Thank you so much. I’m so grateful to you.”

Zhao invoked a childhood game she would play with her father in China, during which they would memorize classic Chinese poems and texts, and would recite them together.

One phrase stuck with her: “People at birth are inherently good” — a phrase she still hangs on to and believes.

“Even though sometimes it may seem like the opposite is true, but I have always found goodness in the people I met everywhere I went in the world,” she added. “So this is for anyone who has the faith and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves. And to hold on to the goodness in each other. No matter how difficult it is to do that.”

Prior to Zhao’s win, Kathryn Bigelow was the only female director to win the award, taking home the Oscar in 2010 for that year’s best picture The Hurt Locker. Bigelow famously beat her ex-husband James Cameron for his work on Avatar that year.

Before tonight’s ceremony, only five women had ever been nominated for Best Director, and 2021 also marks the first year that more than one woman had been nominated for the category.

Those women nominated in the past were Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties in 1977, Jane Campion for 1994’s The Piano, Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation in 2003, Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2010, and Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird in 2018.

Watch above, via ABC.

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