COVID may have traditional movie culture in a stranglehold right now, with theater closures and severely truncated versions of film festivals. Despite that, there are still glimpses that cinema is alive and well, and the best example from this Fall may be the latest film from Chloé Zhao, “Nomadland.”
“Nomadland” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, and since then, it’s become a bit of a cinema darling. It won the prestigious Golden Lion to take the top prize at Venice. The movie then nabbed the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival later that month. That’s the first time a single film has won both of those awards in a calendar year, and it bodes well for the movie’s future success during this year’s awards season.
READ MORE: Chloé Zhao’s ‘Nomadland’ Is As Vast As The American Landscape It Travels [Venice Review]
Based on a non-fiction book of the same name from 2017, “Nomadland” is a quiet character study that tracks outsider existence in the heart of Americana. The film follows Fern, a woman in her sixties who embarks on a cross-country trip across the American West after losing all her savings in the Great Recession. Along the way, she meets other fellow transients that become mentors for her new marginal way of life as a highway nomad.
“Nomadland” stars Frances McDormand as Fern, with David Strathairn also in a starring role. The rest of the slim cast, Fern’s mentors, are real-life nomads of the road. Linda May, Charlene Swankie, and Bob Wells each play cinematic iterations of themselves in the movie, a choice by Zhao to lend an already stripped-down, impressionistic film even more authenticity.
“Nomadland” will have a limited theatrical release before the holidays. This gives an already buzzworthy movie a heightened sense of exclusivity amid COVID. That’s an exciting development to speculate about for future releases in 2021.
For audience members who miss the short window, fear not. “Nomadland” has a theatrical release scheduled for next year, on February 19, 2021.