Nomadland

Winner of the Golden Lion for best film at the 2020 Venice Film Festival and the People’s Choice Award for most popular film at the Toronto International Film Festival, Chloé Zhao’s quietly profound drama stars the outstanding Frances McDormand as a member of a hidden underclass in America: those who have lost their jobs and their homes to economic precarity, and who have taken to a nomadic lifestyle, living out of their vans and RVs while searching for seasonal employment across the American West. Zhao does an amazing job of inserting McDormand’s widow Fern into the lives of real-life nomads, many playing themselves, to outstanding effect. ‘Zhao… [guides] Frances McDormand to a remarkable performance of melancholy gravitas, so rigorously unmannered she's indistinguishable from the real-life nomads with whom she shares the screen… Zhao blurs the line between narrative and vérité documentary. She frames her subjects against majestic landscapes and gorgeous watercolor sunsets but never aestheticizes nature for postcard effect… If you ease into the pensive rhythms of Zhao's film, there's beauty, peace and even comfort to be found.’—David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter