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When Nomadland made its rounds during the film festival and awards circuits in 2020 and 2021, it was clear that it resonated. Released during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a breath of fresh air, highlighting the wide-open spaces and landscapes of the American West and the power of community to audiences largely isolated and quarantined indoors. Nomadland came out exactly when the world needed it. While thematically timely, it was also a unique film in the way it was made, employing a cast largely made up of nonprofessional actors portraying versions of themselves and a crew so dedicated to realism that they lived out of vans during production. Nomadland’s authentic dedication to its nonfiction source material, while still remaining a fictionalized narrative, sets it apart from the scores of films that had come before it. Thus, it’s no surprise that it swept the festival and awards seasons. Nomadland made history. No other film has won both the Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award and the Venice Film Festival’s prestigious Gold Lion in the same season. Chloé Zhao was the first woman of color and first Asian woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director. Frances McDormand was the first woman to win Academy Awards as a Producer and Actor for the same film. Ultimately, Nomadland claimed the highly sought-after top prize in the film industry: Best Picture at the 2021 Academy Awards.  

The story of the film is based on the nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, released in 2017. Like the film, the book focuses on retirement-age Americans who have taken up van living and working odd jobs to make ends meet as a result of the economic effects of the Great Recession. Bruder herself lived out of a van while developing the book and befriended nomads along the way. Many elements from the book made it into the final film, like Linda May, a real person Bruder met who was living out of her jeep while saving up to build an “Earthship.” Bruder also mentions the Amazon CamperForce program, which is shown in the film as Fern works seasonally at an Amazon warehouse while her campground site is paid for by the company. 

Chloé Zhao was born in Beijing in 1982. She honed her craft in New York University’s graduate film program in the 2010s. Nomadland is Zhao’s third film following her first two features: Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider. Both were set in the South Dakota Badlands and featured members of the Lakota Tribe from the Pine Ridge Reservation playing themselves. Working with nonprofessional actors playing versions of themselves has become part of Zhao’s signature creative style, blending documentary and fiction into a compelling hybrid narrative.  

It was McDormand who approached Zhao to make Nomadland, having already secured the rights to Bruder’s book. McDormand had previously seen Zhao’s work with The Rider, and Zhao had been separately working on an idea for a film highlighting young people living out of vans. When McDormand approached her, the two women combined forces and concepts to ultimately create what became Nomadland.  

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