Chloe Zhao makes history with Directors Guild award for 'Nomadland'

CHLOE ZHAO

After winning the Directors' Guild Award for Best Drama means that Chloe Zhao is the favorite to win the Academy Award for Best Director and gives her film, Nomadland the edge for Best Picture.

In winning, Zhao made history by becoming the first woman of color, thus the first woman of Asian descent, to win the DGA award for directing a feature film. The DGA award has been given to only one other woman, Katherine Bigelow for Hurt Locker.

The 73rd Directors Guild of America Awards took place on Saturday, April 10 in a virtual ceremony. 

In her acceptance speech, Zhao dedicated the film to nomadic community, many who had roles in her movie starring Frances McDormand. "The way we treat our elders say a lot of who we are as a society," she said, "we need to do better," perhaps referring to the recent attacks on Asian American elders.

Zhao’s lyrical film about transient workers in the American West also won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the People’s Choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Golden Globe for best drama and best director and the top honor from the Producer’s Guild.

It was the first time there were two directors of Asian descent as nominees. Zhao was up against Asian American director Lee Isaac Chung (Minari). "Your film touched me in such a personal level," Zhao told Chung. "You were able to show us such beauty and love in such an honest and authentic way."

Zhao took time to praise each of her fellow nominees that included: David Fincher (Mank), Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) and Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7. 

Oscars not quite as white; historic year for AAPI filmmakers

For the first time, two directors of Asian descent will compete in the Best Actor category:
Lee Isaac Chung for "Minari" and Chloe Zhao for "Nomadland."

So this is what happens when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts invites more people of color to join: The movie industry's premiere awards, the Oscars, starts to reflect the real America.

This is especially true for AAPI artists and projects. Whether or not they win in their respective categories or not, the sheer number and firsts make this year's Academy Awards one for the history books. For the first time, two Asians have been nominated in the Best Director category and two actors of Asian descent name been nominated as Best Actors.

Isaac Lee Chung and Chloe Zhao were nominated as Best Directors, as were their movies, Minari and Nomadland, respectively, named in the Best Picture catetgory. It's the first time two directors of Asian descent were named. 

Zhao, fresh off her Best Picture win in the Golden Globes, also made history as the first Asian woman nominated in the director category. She has to be the early favorite to repeat her win for the Academy Awards.

"I’m grateful to have gone on this journey with our talented team of filmmakers and to have met so many wonderful people who generously shared their stories with us," Zhao told Variety. "Thank you so much to my Academy peers for recognizing this film that is very close to my heart.” 

For the first time, there will be two Asians in the Best Actor Category: Korean American Steven Yeun for his role of quiet but determined ambition as the Korean American immigrant father in Minari; and Riz Ahmed, a Pakistani Brit, for his emotional portrayal of the drummer losing his hearing in Sound of Metal.

Riz Ahmed and Steven Yeun were nominated for Best Actor Oscars.

Minari scored another win as Yuh-Jung Youn, who plays the feisty grandmother, was nominated as Best Supporting Actress.

“Never in my dreams did I ever think a Korean actress would be nominated for an Oscar, and I can’t believe it’s me!," Youn told Variety. 

Minari's director and writer Isaac Lee Chung, who partially based the film on his own story, was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. The motion picture was also nominated for Best Original Score, by Emile Mosseri.

Zhao's writing was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for Nomadland, which was adapted from the Jessica Bruder novel, "Nomadland: Surviving American in the Twenty-FIrst Century."

The Adapted Screenplay will also feature White Tiger, a rags-to-riches story shot in India and produced by Priyanka Chopra and her husband Nick Jonas.

The Filipino American R&B singer and songwriter H.E.R. had her song, "Fight For You" from the film Judas and the Black Messiah nominated for Best Song.

In the animated feature category, Over the Moon, based on a Chinese myth and featuring an all-Asian voice cast, earned a nomination.

Mulan, the live-action Disney film featuring an all-Asian and Asian American case and  based on the Chinese legend of the woman warrior, was nominated in a couple of categories, Best Costume Design and Best Visual Effects.

The nominations for Asian and Asian American projects along with the plethora of Black actors and projects nominated for an Oscar is a marked change in the past. Only a few years ago, the Oscars was derided for nominating only white actors resulting in the infamous #OscarsSoWhite hashtag.

Efforts by the Academy to diversify its selection process by inviting more movie-making individuals in front of and behind the camera to become members may be showing up in the nominations this year.

Whether or not the increased inclusion of people and perspectives other than the still-powerful white view is simply a temporary fad or a permanent trend will depend on next year, and the next and the next.

Hollywood is starting to realize that there is a wealth of material and talent outside of the traditional white bubble of the past. The fact that a majority of the movie-going audience are primarily made up of people of color helps the bottom-line, too is not lost on the profit-motivated industry.

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."

Minari snubbed in Golden Globe nominations

AAPI watchers of the entertainment industry were up in arms early this morning when the Golden Globes announced its nominations for the awards because the Hollywood Foreign Press Association passed over Asian American film 'Minari in the acting,  directing and writing categories.

There was already a controversy when the film, which walked away with a best picture in the Sundance Film Festival, about an Korean American immigrant family was classified as a Foreign Language film. Since the movie is predominantly in Korean, the language spoken at home of first-generation immigrants from Korea, HFPA rules made it ineligible for Best Picture.

When HPFA announced their decision about Minari last December, writer Lulu Wang tweeted her disappointment about the news that the film would be excluded from the Best Picture category. “I have not seen a more American film than #Minari this year,” Wang wrote. “It's a story about an immigrant family, IN America, pursuing the American dream. We really need to change these antiquated rules that characterize American as only English-speaking.”

Adding insult to injury, when Minari's lead actor, Steven Yeun (Walking Dead)  and presumed frontrunner Youn Yuh-Jung were passed over for best actor and best supporting actress, respectively, the criticism exploded on social media.

Minari director Lee Isaac Chung, who also wrote the screenplay partially based on his real-life experiences, also missed out when he wasn't among the nominees for best director, either.

Some of the sting of having Chung overlooked was eased by Chloe Zhao's nomination in the Best Director's category. She is the first woman of Asian descent to be included in that classification. She was nominated for her work for Nomadland, a moody piece of contemporary Americana starring Frances McDormand, who was also nominated for Best Actress in a Drama.

Nomadland is in the running for Best Motion Picture Drama. Zhao also nabbed a nomination for her screenplay.

The Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama includes Riz Ahmed for his performance in The Sound of Metal, in which he plays a metal band drummer who is losing his hearing.

(For the curious, Tahar Rahim who received a Best Actor nomination for The Mauritanian, although Muslim, is from Algeria and so we could not list him as an Asian.)

Joining Ahmed is Dev Patel, who in a case of color-blind casting, was nominated in the category of Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, for  playing the lead role in The Personal History of David Copperfield.

Filipino American H.E.R. (Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson) was nominated in the Best Song category for "Fight For You" (cowritten by Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II and Tiara Thomas) for Judas and the Black Messiah, the story of Black Panther Fred Hampton who was killed in the infamous shootout with Chicago police.

Over the Moon, the animated feature of an Asian American girl and her friends seeking the moon goddess, based on a Chinese fable, was nominated for Best Animated Movie. It featured AAPI actors giving voice to the characters.

The HFPA, made up of about 90 members who are based in Southern California and write for a wide-ranging list of foreign media, are the voters of the Golden Globes. The group are not exclusively movie critics but also include feature writers or gossip writers, have been criticized for their subjectivity and for their susceptibility to celebrity glamor and influence. In other words, if an actor or studio caters to the HFPA, he or she would likely be better received by the HFPA than someone who doesn't cater to them.

It's no small comfort to know that a lot of really outstanding products got overlooked  by the Golden Globes, and perhaps its just coincidence that the majority of the snubs were films that featured POC. I mean, Emily in Paris? Really? Certainly  Netflix's Da Five Bloods, HBO's groundbreaking Insecure, the actors of Lovecraft Country and PEN15, the Good Place deserved some mention.

The 78th Golden Globe Awards will take place 8 p.m. ET, on Feb. 28 on NBC. Comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will split co-hosting duties for the ceremony, (or should I say "ceremonies?) being held simultaneously in New York City and Los Angeles.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is my opinion. Readers are urged to read several sources to form your own opinion.

Thanks to 'Minari,' 'Nomadland' & 'Sound of Metal,' Oscars and AAPI could have a historic convergence

The Americanization of a Korean American immigrant family is told in 'Minari.'

OPINION

More and more, it looks like it could be a history-making year for Hollywood, AAPI movies and filmmakers when the Oscar nominees are announced March 15.

It looks like Minari could be up against Nomadland for best picture and best director with Sound of Metal starring Riz Ahmed as a darkhorse.

Minari, written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung, won the best picture award by the New York Film Critics Online last week. This is the third straight year the critics  picked a foreign language film as best picture. Minari, the story of a Korean American family and set in Alabama is mostly in Korean.

Last year, the film critics picked the Korean film, Parasite and the year before that, Roma, the Spanish-speaking Argentinian movie. Both films were named in the Best Picture by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts in their respective years with Parasite winning Best Picture last year and Roma winning best foreign feature the year before. 

If history is a predictor, it bodes well for Minari, to win Hollywood's coveted Oscar.

Director Chloe Zhao on location for 'Nomadland.'

Although the film Minari won the NY film critics' Best Picture accolades and Best Supporting Actress went to Yuh-Jung Youn as the grandmother in Minari, the Best Director award went to Chloé Zhao for her work on Nomadland, which she can add to the three dozen other awards she received for directing the Frances McDormand starrer.

The NY critics gave the best actor award to another Asian American, Riz Ahmed for his performance in Sound of Metal. Ahmed is also in contention to be nominated for the Oscar's best actor award along with Minari's Steven Yeun.

The exclusive club of studio heads who give the green light to most Hollywood production is still overwhelmingly white and despite China overtaking the U.S. as the No. 1 moviegoing market, they are hesitant to venture beyond the Eurocentric paradigm when deciding which movies get made.

Riz Ahmad delivers an Oscar-worthy performance in "Sound of Metal."

There is also an outside chance that no Asian or Asian American will win an Oscar nomination, in which case, we should skip the Oscars altogether. If nothing else, this year demonstrates the depth of Asian and Asian American talent to Hollywood decision-makers. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: The nominations for the 93rd Academy Awards will be announced March 15 and the in-person awards show will held on April 25, 2021.

While the awards -- Golden Globes, SAG, Critics' Choice, People's Choice -- are nice to have, just as important is that there are so many choices to pick from. There are still not enough movies by and about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders but this year, there is at least more than one film under consideration. That's a sign of progress, I guess. It is too early to say whether this year is an anomaly, a temporary trend or the birth of a permanent genre.

For members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts who vote in the several categories, especially the newly inducted members who were "invited" to join in order to diversify its membership, we refer you to the list compiled by Gold Open in partnership with the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE) for their first-ever Gold List of outstanding work by AAPI artists. 

The full list of Gold List selections are below:

Best Picture
Minari and Sound of Metal
Honorable Mentions: The Half of It, The White Tiger, Yellow Rose

Best Director
Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) and Chloe Zhao (Nomadland)
Honorable Mentions: Ramin Bahrani (The White Tiger), Diane Paragas (Yellow Rose), Alice Wu (The Half of It), Alan Yang (Tigertail)

Best Actor
Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal) and Steven Yeun (Minari)
Honorable Mentions: Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger), Dev Patel (The Personal History of David Copperfield), Harry Shum Jr. (All My Life) 

Best Actress
Yeri Han (Minari) and Leah Lewis (The Half of It)
Honorable Mentions: Hong Chau (Driveways), Tsai Chin (Lucky Grandma), Eva Noblezada (Yellow Rose)

Best Supporting Actor
Alan Kim (Minari) and Orion Lee (First Cow)
Honorable Mentions: Lucas Jaye (Driveways), Tzi Ma (Mulan), Rajkummar Rao (The White Tiger)

Best Supporting Actress
Phillipa Soo (Hamilton) and Yuh-Jung Youn (Minari)
Honorable Mentions: Priyanka Chopra Jonas (The White Tiger), Gong Li (Mulan), Lea Salonga (Yellow Rose)

Best Original Screenplay
Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) and Alice Wu (The Half of it)
Honorable Mentions: Mong-Hong Chung and Yao-Sheng Chang (A Sun), Diane Paragas (Yellow Rose), Isabel Sandoval (Lingua Franca), Alan Yang (Tigertail) 

Best Adapted Screenplay
Ramin Bahrani (The White Tiger) and Chloe Zhao (Nomadland)

Best Documentary Feature
Be Water and A Thousand Cuts
Honorable Mentions: 76 Days, The Donut King, The Social Dilemma

Best Animated Feature
Bombay Rose and Over the Moon
Honorable Mentions: Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, On-Gaku: Our Sound, A Whisker Away

A WORD OF CAUTION: This is an opinion piece. Readers should research multiple sources to form their own opinion.

CORRECTION Feb. 3, 12:30 p.m. to clarify Roma winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Motion Picture in 2019.

Oscars: Chloe Zhao touted in Best Director category

'Nomadland' director Chloe Zhao may be up for an Oscar ... or two, or three.

We may see unprecedented Asian representation in the race for the Oscars this year. Chloe Zhao is receiving almost universal praise for her directing of Nomadland. In fact, she may be the leading contender in that category.

If nominated, Zhao would be joining Lee Isaac Chung, director of the Asian American movie, Minari, who is also being touted as a candidate in the same category.

Unlike Asian American directors of her generation, Zhao didn't start her movie-making career within the genre of "ethnic" films dealing identity or fitting into white culture. The Beijing-raised director made a name for herself with her films about the modern American West, Songs My Brothers Taught Me and The Rider, all starring non-Asians.

In Nomadland, Zhao is still exploring the American West, but instead of rodeo riders, she has her focus on the subculture of homeless senior citizens, who wander in their trailers and campers from job to job, a byproduct of the country's increasing corporate and global culture.

She may also be in nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for her work on Nomadland, adapted from the nonfiction book of the same name by Jessica Bruder. 

Zhao's latest work is a hit with audiences (currently at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes) and film critics, winning high praise in the film festival circuit, including the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. In recent years, both of these festivals have been strong indicators for a Best Picture nomination.

Zhao also edited and produced the picture, which will be released on December 4, qualifying her for the Oscars.

There's a sadness in her films, devoid of special effects and action sequences, as she concentrates on the characters making their way through a changing world, as they find a way to survive or get left behind by the inevitable shift, but in the background, the landscape, bare, rough and beautiful, remains.

Because of the outstanding work by the directors, both Nomadland and Minari, are also potential nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

If both Zhao and Chung get that nomination -- and likewise if both Nomadland and Minari get nominated in the Best Picture category -- that will mark a real change in Hollywood culture as the older establishment yields its influence to the incoming generation of diverse filmmakers. 

It may be hoping for too much for both films and both directors to get nominate; but if they did, that would be going against precedence. They both must pass muster from the members of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts, which hand out the awards. Despite recent efforts to add diversity to its membership, it is still overwhelming older, white and male.

Can the Oscars have another Asian motion picture be awarded Best Picture. After last year's Parasite from Korea, can artistic merit overcome the institutional bias? This year, one Asian nominee might be a possibility, but to have both films nominated might be too much for the out-of-touch membership -- even though they deserve it.

The Oscar nominations will be announce March 15, 2021 and the awards ceremony will air April 25, 2021 on ABC. Details of the format for the awards show is yet to be determined because of the coronavirus limitations.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A word of caution, this is news sprinkled with opinion. Readers are encouraged to seek multiple news sources to formulate their own positions.