Chloé Zhao

Early life and education

Chloé Zhao was born Zhao Ting (赵婷; Zhào Tíng) on 31 March 1982, in Beijing, China. Her father, Zhao Yuji (赵玉吉; Zhào Yùjí), was a successful executive at Shougang Group, one of the country's largest state-owned steel companies. Song Dandan, her stepmother, is a well-known Chinese actress who was in various sitcoms, mostly known for her appearance in Home with Kids.

According to her own description, Zhao was a curious child who was drawn to Western pop culture, especially in the realm of film and music. Zhao was uninterested in school in Beijing, as she focused on art and her own pursuits instead. As a teenager, Zhao described herself as a "rebellious and lazy student" who was more interested in drawing manga-style comics and writing fan fiction than in academics. She was strongly influenced by the films of Wong Kar-wai, particularly Happy Together. During this period of her life, her parents divorced. Her father remarried Song Dandan. Although she was still learning English at the time, her parents sent her to Brighton College in 1998 at the age of 15. Zhao later moved to Los Angeles by herself in 2000, living in a Koreatown apartment and attending Los Angeles High School. Afterwards, she attended Mount Holyoke College, where she majored in politics and minored in film studies, graduating in 2005.

Post-graduation, while bartending and working odd jobs, Zhao realized she enjoyed meeting people and hearing about their lives, giving her the push to attend film school. A Vulture article reported that "Four years was enough to turn her off of politics...she found herself drawn more to people than to policy". In 2010, she followed up on her undergraduate film minor by joining the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television Graduate Film Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Career

Zhao's first short film The Atlas Mountains, released in 2009, was about a woman who develops a brief yet passionate relationship with an immigrant worker who comes to fix her computer. In 2010, while at New York University, she released a second short film, Daughters, about a 14-year-old girl living in rural China who is forced into an arranged marriage and attempts to break free. It won First Place Student Live Action Short at the 2010 Palm Springs International Short Fest and Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Cinequest Film Festival.

In 2015, Zhao premiered her debut feature, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, at the Sundance Film Festival as part of the U.S. Dramatic Competition. Shot on location at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the film depicts the relationship between a Lakota Sioux man and his younger sister. Partially improvised, around 100 hours of footage was collected as Zhao worked with the real residents of the reservation to draw inspiration from their lives and personalities in order to help shape the story. Zhao noted that her experience leaving China to study abroad helped her connect to the story of a character struggling with the decision to leave his hometown.

The film was praised for its intimate storytelling and its portrayal of Lakota Sioux life. After the Sundance premiere, it was later played at Cannes Film Festival as part of the Director's Fortnight selection and was nominated for Best First Feature at the 31st Independent Spirit Awards.

In 2017, Zhao directed The Rider, a contemporary western drama, which follows a young cowboy's journey to self-discovery after a near-fatal accident ends his professional riding career. The film was executive produced by her father, Yuji Zhao. As with her first feature, Zhao engaged a cast of non-actors who lived at the filming location, in this case on a ranch. The film was praised for being an innovative spin on the Western, with Zhao's perspective as a Chinese immigrant revitalising the "oldest genre."

The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival as part of the Directors' Fortnight selection and won the Art Cinema Award. It earned her nominations for Best Feature and Best Director at the 33rd Independent Spirit Awards. At the same ceremony, Zhao became the inaugural winner of the Bonnie Award, named after Bonnie Tiburzi, which recognizes a mid-career female director. The film was released on 13 April 2018 by Sony Pictures Classics and was critically acclaimed. Peter Keough of The Boston Globe wrote: "[The film] achieves what cinema is capable of at its best: It reproduces a world with such acuteness, fidelity, and empathy that it transcends the mundane and touches on the universal."

Filmmaking styles and techniques

Human connection and realism

Zhao's films consistently explore themes of loneliness, identity, displacement, connection, and the search for belonging. Her characters are often positioned as domesticated people in society and are portrayed through natural lighting and lived-in locations, often blurring the line between fictional storyline and documentary. Believing filmmakers tell their stories to not feel alone, she focuses on the themes of authenticity and places an emphasis on real stories.

Frances McDormand told Rolling Stone that Zhao is "basically like a journalist...she gets to know your story, and she creates a character from that" and that she "draws a razor-sharp line between sentiment and sentimentality". A Filmmaker article quoted Zhao as saying, "I want to find new ways to place the camera to evoke more of a feeling. My goal is to put the camera inside of [the character]". An example of her process can be found in Eternals when she saw the connection between actors Lauren Ridloff and Barry Keoghan, who play Makkari and Druig, respectively. She states, "It's the same as I did with Nomadland and The Rider. I would see how they interact and I would write that into the film".

Zhao's style of character-driven realism was also influenced through the scriptwriting process of Andrea Arnold's adaptation of Wuthering Heights for the way its characters are shown interacting with their environment. In a fantasy realm perspective, she mentions The Lord of the Rings, praising the series for their immersive landscapes. She mentions the films had an emphasis on scenic cinematography, as they inspired her for that immersive visual approach with vivid storytelling. These influences also explain her tendency to center characters with their surroundings, which allows emotion and settings to coexist.

Female gaze

Zhao's style also leans on perspective of the female gaze. In a 2023 interview with Brut America, she mentions, "For me, there is a yin and yang in all of us, feminine and masculine strength and I think often in our society in our industry, the masculine strength is being celebrated, and that's a painful way to exist both for women and men." On directing these myriad of characters from the female perspective, she says, "I always try to find a way to give them a chance to be in touch with their feminine side...We must also allow our male characters to access their softer side, I think that's the true female gaze."

Influences

Zhao cites Wong Kar-wai's romance Happy Together as the "film that made me want to make films". She was also influenced by Spike Lee, who was her film professor while she studied at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She cited Ang Lee as an influence as well, saying, "Ang Lee's career has been very inspiring to me — how he's able to bring where he comes from to all the films that he makes". She also has mentioned Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick as key influences. In a January 2026 episode of The Interview podcast, Zhao revealed that Malick had called her — despite the two never having met before — on New Year's Day that year. During the conversation Zhao told Malick that she was a part of his storytelling "lineage". As for her early introductions to American cinema, they were The Terminator, Ghost, and Sister Act.

China controversy

After Zhao became the second woman to win a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for Nomadland, many Chinese viewers, as well as Chinese state media, celebrated her win and "sought to claim Zhao's glory for China". Shortly afterward, some netizens began to question Zhao's citizenship and debated "whether it is appropriate to claim Zhao's victory as China's", with Variety calling the claim "a common move by state-backed outlets to drum up nationalism". Much of the controversy hinged on two sets of remarks: a 2013 Filmmaker magazine interview in which Zhao described China as "a place where there are lies everywhere", and a late 2020 interview in which Zhao was misquoted as saying, "The US is now my country". She had actually said, "The US is not my country", and the error was corrected around two months later. References to Zhao in Chinese media were censored following her Oscar win.

Personal life

Until 2023, Zhao was in a relationship with English cinematographer Joshua James Richards, with whom she also collaborated on a number of her films. Richards and Zhao met while they were film students at New York University.

Zhao considers herself to be neurodivergent, which she describes as a "superpower".

Filmography

Feature films

Short films

Television

Commercials

A Clydesdale's Journey (2022) for Budweiser

Diablo IV: Saviors Wanted (2023) for Blizzard Entertainment

Awards and nominations

Daughters (2010) won First Place Student Live Action Short at the 2010 Palm Springs International Short Fest and Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Cinequest Film Festival. In 2021 Zhao's Nomadland (2020) won the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Director. Nomadland (2020) also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the BAFTA Award for Best Direction, the BAFTA Award for Best Film, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Editing, the Critic's Choice Movie Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the Critic's Choice Movie Award for Best Director.

Zhao was nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 98th Academy Awards in 2026 for Hamnet. It was also nominated for Best Picture.

It won awards for the Best Motion Picture – Drama at the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, and Outstanding British Film at the 79th British Academy Film Awards.

In December 2024, Chloé Zhao was included on the BBC's 100 Women list.