Photo: Harald Krichel / CC BY-SA 4.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Chloé Zhao is the working director I admire most without reservation. Sweeping the Golden Lion, then the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture with Nomadland would be career-defining for anyone, but what moves me is her gaze: she films ordinary, weathered people and empty landscapes with a documentary tenderness that big-budget cinema rarely allows. The Rider remains, for me, one of the most quietly devastating films of its decade. That a Beijing-born filmmaker became only the second woman to win the directing Oscar says something hopeful about cinema's borders dissolving. I will follow whatever she makes next, sight unseen.
Overview
Chloé Zhao (born Zhao Ting; 31 March 1982) is a Chinese filmmaker. She is known primarily for her work on independent films. For her film Nomadland (2020), Zhao became the second woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Chloé Zhao
- Name (Japanese)
- クロエ・ジャオ
- Reading
- くろえ・じゃお
- Born
- March 31, 1982 (age 44)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Aries / Dog
- Origin
- Beijing, People's Republic of China
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- film director / screenwriter / film producer / film editor / manufacturer
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Los Angeles High School
- University
- Mount Holyoke College
Awards & achievements
- 2020 Golden Lion
- 2020 Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Director
- 2021 Academy Award for Best Director
- 2021 Golden Globe Award for Best Director
- 2021 Time 100
- 2023 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 2024 BBC 100 Women
- 2021 Academy Award for Best Picture
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
5. Works & records
| Category | Title | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notable work | Songs My Brothers Taught Me | — | |
| Notable work | The Rider | — | |
| Notable work | Nomadland | — | |
| Notable work | Hamnet | — |
6. Links
Film director — see all → · Screenwriter — see all → · More people from People's Republic of China →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-11
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.