‘It’s been beneficial to work on these two films together, sometimes you get so locked into one thing, so it’s been really nice to force yourself to step out and come back and say, ‘Okay’. Nonetheless she did find herself completing the intimate drama of Nomadland at the same time she was hired as director of Marvel’s sprawling galactic epic The Eternals (2021). She describes her career technique as diving in then splashing around to find her way once she is in the water. If this created pressure, she determined not to let it get to her.

Arm yourself with information, and then challenge that too.’Īfter only a handful of features Zhang found herself one of the most talked- about filmmakers in the industry. Studying political science in a liberal arts college was a way for me to figure out what is real. I went to England suddenly and relearned my history. A lot of info I received when I was younger was not true, and I became very rebellious toward my family and my background. ‘You felt like you were never going to be able to get out.

‘It goes back to when I was a teenager in China, being in a place where there are lies everywhere,’ she says of her choices. Nomadland (2020), for which she became the first Asian woman to be nominated for – and win – a Best Director Oscar, is the story of a woman travelling across the American West after losing everything in the economic crash of 2008.

Her first feature, Songs my Brothers Taught Me (2015) is set on a Native American reservation, while The Rider (2017) is about a rodeo rider. Yet the films which have won her acclaim are very definitely stories of the American heartland. She was born in China, went to high school in London, and university in Massachusetts. Chloe Zhao is something of an internationalist by outlook and background.

Raising the Dead by Andy Dougan