Nomadland's' Chloe Zhao and Lee Isaac Chung's 'Minari' win Golden Globe awards

Chloe Zhao, right, directs actress Frances McDormand in 'Nomadland.'

OPINION

Chloe Zhao made history Sunday night when she won the Best Director Golden Globe for her work on the movie, Nomadland, which was also named Best Dramatic Movie by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Zhao became the first Asian woman to win the director's award and only the second woman, overall. She was able to capture the lifestyle of nomadic American workers who move from job to job. Living in their trailers and vans, they form communities, a part of Americana that has received scant attention until Jessica Bruder's novel of the same name came out.

Minari, the movie which tells the tale of a Korean American immigrants trying to fit into a new country, won the Best Foreign Language Globe. 

The American-made movie, written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung and filmed in Arkansas, was at the center of a controversy because it was placed in the Foreign Language category which kept it from being placed in the Best Picture category. 

When the HFPA placed Minari in the foreign language category, it stung Steven Yuen, who plays the father of the Korean American family in the film.

"When you call Minari a foreign film," says Yuen, "it doesn't help the kind of general anti-Asian sentiment, the perpetual foreigner stereotype that Asian Americans are dealing with, not just in an abstract representational way, but in a lived experience, under attack by our government and individuals."

Chung and Zhao, like the other award recipients, received their awards virtually in the unusual Golden Globe Awards show hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler with Fey in New York City and Poehler in Los Angeles.

'Minari' won the Best Foreign Language film for the Golden Globe award.

The two directors and their films could possibly be pitted against each other in other award shows, including the Academy Awards. If that were to occur, having two Asians in the same category would be an unprecedented benchmark in the history of Asian American movie-making.

Zhao called her film, a “pilgrimage through grief and healing.” Upon receiving the award for Best Movie Drama, she said the reason she fell in love with movies. “It’s a chance to laugh and cry together and learn from each other.”

Diversity and inclusion of people of color were the underlying themes of the evening, from Fey's and Poehler's opening monologue to the acceptance speech of most of the awardees after the Los Angeles Times revealed that the 87-member HFPA has no black members. 

Jane Fonda, who accepted the Cecil B. Mayer lifetime achievement award, talked about the power of the movies to break down walls and give people new  perspectives.

"But there's a story we've been afraid to see and hear about ourselves in this industry," said Fonda. "A story about which voices we respect and elevate and which we tune out. A story about who's offered a seat at the table and who is kept out of the rooms where decisions are made. So let's all of us -- including all the groups that decide who gets hired and what gets made and who wins awards -- let's all of us make an effort to expand that tent so that everyone rises and everyone's story has a chance to be seen and heard."