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."
In 2018, Zhao directed Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand. Adapted from Jessica Bruder's non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, it was shot over four months with many actual nomadic workers. People interviewed for Bruder's book played themselves in the film. Zhao and McDormand met the day before the 2018 Independent Spirit Awards, where McDormand was nominated for Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead and Zhao received a $50,000 grant for women directors. During the event, they hinted at their future project together.
Nomadland premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim and won the Golden Lion award, and subsequently played at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice Award. The film was released on 19 February 2021, by Searchlight Pictures. Zhao won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director for Nomadland, making her the first woman of Asian descent honored, and only the second woman to win a Golden Globe for directing since Barbra Streisand in 1984. In April 2021, Zhao won the Academy Award for Best Director, becoming the second woman to do so (Kathryn Bigelow being the first). The film did not receive a theatrical release in China, with speculation that it was due to her past comments on the nation. News of her Best Director win at the Academy Awards was also censored.
In September 2018, Marvel Studios hired Zhao to direct Eternals, based on the comic book characters of the same name. The film follows the events of the 2019 Marvel movie Avengers: Endgame, featuring a new team of superheroes that must reunite in order to fight an ancient enemy of the human race. Zhao named Ridley Scott's Prometheus and Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook as influences on the film. It was released on 5 November 2021. Zhao is both the director and one of the four writers of the film, the others being Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo. Eternals received mixed reviews. The New Yorker stated that Zhao's style of directing dialogue scenes "reveals the absurdity of the script," saying "it might as well have been done via green screen, for the little tangibility and texture that it offers the characters and viewers alike." The article also claimed that the film has reportedly been banned in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait due to the relationship between two male characters, Phastos and Ben. In spite of negative reviews, it still made $161.7 million during its opening weekend and became No. 1 at the box office. Critics noted Zhao's efforts to integrate her own visual realism into a classic superhero genre format.
In 2023, Zhao served as an executive producer on The Graduates directed by Hannah Peterson.
In April 2023, Zhao was announced to be directing a film adaptation of Hamnet, with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in talks to star in the film and Amblin Partners to be producing. The film premiered at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival to critical acclaim. It subsequently played at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice Award, making Zhao a director to win the TIFF's People's Choice Award twice.
In February 2025, it was announced that Zhao would be directing the pilot episode for a revival of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu. On 14 March 2026, Sarah Michelle Gellar revealed that Hulu passed on the pilot.
