Chloé Zhao
Birthdate: Mar 31, 1982
Birthplace: Beijing, China
Chloé Zhao (birthname: Zhao Ting) is an acclaimed Chinese American filmmaker who has traversed a wide range of subjects and styles, from low-budget indie stories to Marvel epics and Shakespeare-themed drama. Zhao enjoyed a prestigious feature debut—premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, sold by the then-powerful sales company Fortissimo Films, launching internationally in Directors Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and released in the U.S. by Kino Lorber--with her film set on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), on which Zhao was director/writer/producer/editor, with backing from fellow lead producer Forest Whitaker, featuring a cast of indigenous actors including John Reddy, Jashaun St. John, Travis Lone Hill, Taysha Fuller and Irene Bedard.
Zhao was director/writer/producer of the contemporary western, The Rider (2017), with a cast of non-professional actors belonging to the Lakota people of South Dakota led by Brady Jandreau, premiering at Directors Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival where it won the Art Cinema Award, and went on to win the best picture award from the National Society of Film Critics before earning $4.2 million for distributor Sony Pictures Classics.
Zhao reached global status as a major filmmaker (director/writer/producer/editor) and won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars—among several other best picture awards--with her American road drama, Nomadland (2020), based on Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction account of poor American drifters in the 21st century, starring Frances McDormand (who won the Oscar for Best Actress and also produced), with David Strathairn, Linda May and Charlene Swankie, and which premiered at the Venice Film Festival (winning the Golden Lion best film prize) before grossing $39.5 million globally, with U.S. distribution by Searchlight Pictures.
Chloé Zhao entered the Hollywood studio realm as director/co-writer (with Patrick Burleigh and story writers Ryan and Kaz Firpo) of Walt Disney Studios/Marvel Studios’ 26th film in the Marvel Comics Universe, Eternals (2021), based on the MCU group of characters called The Eternals, co-starring Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie, grossing a disappointing $402 million globally and proving to be the first movie by Zhao to receive mixed-to-negative reviews.
Zhao switched modes dramatically for her next feature project as director/writer/editor/executive producer, her big-screen adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, Hamnet (2025), with O’Farrell as co-screenwriter, co-starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, with Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn and Jacobi Jupe, produced by Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris, Liza Marshall and Nicolas Gonda, premiering at the Telluride Film Festival and winning the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, and released wide by Focus Features.
Personal life
Chloé Zhao was born and raised in Beijing, China, by her parents, father Yuji (a steel company executive, real estate developer, and equity investor) and stepmother Song Dandan (an actor). Zhao attended grade and middle schools in Beijing as a confessed “lazy student,” and was then sent by her parents at 15 to study at the U.K. boarding school Brighton College. Zhao left that school and moved on her own to Koreatown in Los Angeles, attending Los Angeles High School, and then attended Mount Holyoke College, where she graduated in 2005 with a major in political science and a minor in film studies. Zhao did several odd jobs until attending the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where she began making short films in the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television Graduate Film Program. Zhao lives with her partner, cinematographer Joshua James Richards, in Ojai, California.
Chloé Zhao Movies
director
Previous (5)
- 2025 |
- 2021 |
- 2021 |
- 2018 |
- 2016 |
Songs My Brothers Taught Me
Two siblings living on Pine Ridge Reservation face challenges after their father's death. The brother considers leaving for LA, but it would mean separating from his beloved sister.
actor
Previous (1)
Facts About Chloé Zhao
Condition: Chloé Zhao has announced that she has neurodivergence.
“Gnarly”: Zhao has been described by her partner and cinematographer Joshua James Richards as “gnarly and extreme,” precisely the kind of person he had wanted to meet at film school.
Influences: Chloé Zhao has discussed her filmmaking influences, led by Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai and his Happy Together (1997), Spike Lee (with whom she studied at New York University), the late Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee, Werner Herzog, Terrence Malick, and Andrea Arnold’s screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights (2011).
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