Asian Excellence at the Golden Globes
Chloé Zhao is only the second woman to win in the Best Director Category, after Barbara Streisand’s Yentl in 1984, and the first woman of colour to do so, while Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari won the category of Foreign Language Films.
Chloé Zhao for Nomadland
Born Zhao Ting to Yuji Zhao and Huang Tao on March 13th, 1982, she is a first-generation Chinese immigrant who attended a boarding school in London and a high school in Los Angeles. She studied political science at Mount Holyoke College, and film production at New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
She had always been drawn to the influences of Western Culture, and chose to make films that highlight the historical and modern importance of some of the unsung heroes of Western culture with her first independent feature films Songs My Brother Taught Me (2015) and The Rider (2017). The former is a film that depicts the relationship between a Lakota Sioux man and his younger sister as they navigate their lives as Indigenous Americans on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; the latter is a contemporary western following a young cowboy after a near-fatal accident. These films are unique in that they were filmed with a cast of non-actors and on location, which contributes to the simultaneous mundaneness and universality of these specific stories.
Nomadland (2020) is Zhao’s third feature film, shot over four months while traveling the American West in an RV. The film, following in the footsteps of her former projects, utilized non-actors: Zhao employed real-life nomadic workers in order to tell their stories genuinely and authentically. The film also stars two-time Academy and Emmy Award winner Frances McDormand as the lead character, Fern. The film premiered at Venice Film Festival where it received critical acclaim and won the Golden Lion award, and subsequently won the People’s Choice Award at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was released on February 19, 2021 by Searchlight Pictures.
On February 15th, 2021, Variety reported that “with 34 awards season trophies for directing, 13 for screenplay and nine for editing, Chloe Zhao has surpassed Alexander Payne as the most awarded person in a single awards season in the modern era.” As of February 28th, she added the Golden Globe for Director of a Motion Picture to her list of accolades.
Lee Isaac Chung for Minari:
Chung was born to South Korean immigrants on October 19, 1978, in Denver, Colorado, and grew up on a small farm in rural Lincoln, Arkansas. He attended Yale for biology and had plans to attend med school after he graduated but chose to pursue filmmaking instead.
Chung’s directorial debut was the Rwanda-set Munyurangabo, a collaboration with students at an international relief base in Kigali. The film tells the story of friendship between two boys in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Chung had accompanied his wife Valerie to Rwanda in 2006 when she volunteered to work with those affected by the 1994 genocide. In collaboration with co-writer Samuel Gray Anderson, Chung shot the film over 11 days, working with a team of nonprofessional actors found through local orphanages and his students as crew members.
Munyurangabo was highly acclaimed, premiering at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival as an Official Selection and played as an official selection at top film festivals worldwide, including the Busan International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Roger Ebert’s Ebertfest, and AFI Fest in Hollywood, where it won the festival’s Grand Prize. It was an official selection of the New Directors/New Films Festival at New York’s Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. Chung was nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards and the Gotham Awards.
Chung wrote and directed Minari (2020), which was released to critical acclaim, including the recent Golden Globes win for Foreign Language Film. Minari is a semi-autobiographical film starring Steven Yeun as Jacob Yi, Han Ye-ri as Monica Yi, Alan Kim as David Yi, and Noel Kate Cho as Anne Yi. The film follows the Yi family of South Korean immigrants as they adjust to their lives in rural America. Chung wrote the film in the summer of 2018, by which time he was considering retiring from filmmaking and had accepted a teaching job at the University of Utah’s Asia Campus. Recalling this period, he said “I figured I might have just one shot at making another film … I needed to make it very personal and throw in everything I was feeling.”
Impact on Filmmakers
The 2021 Golden Globes made history by nominating more than one female director in the Director of a Motion Picture category, including two women of colour: Chloé Zhao for Nomadland, Emerald Fennell for Pieces of a Woman, and Regina King for One Night in Miami. This incredible selection of female filmmakers follows the female directors who were snubbed at the 2020 Oscars, including the names of the women on Natalie Portman’s cape: including but not limited to Lulu Wang for The Farewell, Greta Gerwig for Little Women, and Alma Har’el for Honey Boy.
However, it also follows a positive pattern of Asian representation in filmmaking, with director Bong Joon-ho’s 2020 Best Director win for Parasite, as well as Parasite’s wins for Best International Feature Film and Best Picture. The film is the first foreign language film to win the Best Picture Academy Award. Asian people have been breaking into the industry, and are here to stay, much to the relief of their Asian viewers.
“In a time where Asian-Americans are being attacked because we’re still seen as foreign and a disease, Chloe Zhao and Minari winning Golden Globes means so much,” said journalist Diep Tran in a tweet. “We exist, we are Americans.”
Personal
As a child of immigrants, Minari hit close to home. The unique experience of Asian-American immigrants is one that has been left untold for too long, and I’m incredibly happy that Lee Isaac Chung decided to tell his story. As an aspiring Asian-Canadian female filmmaker, Chloe Zhao’s win in the Best Director category is more than an award. It is a pioneering achievement for the Asian community. It represents hope for people who look like us, people who have craved representation on-screen, but also in writer’s rooms and director’s chairs. I am extremely proud of the recognition that these great filmmakers are achieving, and am looking forward to the strides that the Golden Globes have committed to taking in the name of diversity.
