GREAT ESCAPE

An Oscar frontrunner after dominating festivals with its tale of itinerant van dwellers, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland is a film for our recession-struck times. Total Film speaks to the team behind this year’s most soulful movie.

- JAMES MOTTRAM

What year is it? 2020!” exclaims Chloé Zhao, trying to trace back the genesis of her new movie Nomadland. A production that got bifurcated by her time shooting Marvel’s forthcoming Eternals, it’s left her a little confused about the order of events. As she chats with Total Film over Zoom, her dog barking in the background, Zhao’s brain fog finally clears. “We shot in September 2018. I started shooting Eternals in September 2019. So we all met at the end of 2017.”

The confusion is more than forgivable, especially in a year as bizarre as 2020. Even the way Nomadland arrived in the world this past autumn was offbeat. A Venice Film Festival premiere without the cast and crew. A virtual bow at Toronto. And a drive-in Telluride debut – all socially distanced – that took place in Los Angeles, not Colorado, as the wildfires were burning in the background. Three simultaneous screenings, in an all-too-rare moment of cross-festival harmony in the era of Covid-19.

Inspired by the real-life nomad community in America – “van dwellers” who have left behind suburban living – Nomadland may have landed in one of the most difficult years in living memory. But a story about finding freedom on the open road when we’re all confined to our homes feels both hugely timely – and oddly soothing – right now. “We always obviously hoped it would have a resonance,” says producer Peter Spears, “but things conspired in a way that we hadn’t anticipated.”