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Alternative Title:
Zhao Ting
Chloé Zhao, original name
Zhao Ting, (born March 31, 1982, Beijing, China), Chinese filmmaker who was known for absorbing and closely observed movies about journeys of self-discovery set in the American West. Her films delve into rarely explored strata of American society. For
Nomadland (2020), she became the first person of colour to win the Academy Award for best director.
Zhao’s father was an executive at a major steel company and later worked in real estate and equity investment, while her mother worked at a hospital. Zhao was uninterested in school in Beijing, preferring to focus on manga and movies. Although she spoke little English, in 1998 her parents sent her to England, where she attended the Sussex boarding school Brighton College from 1998 to 2000. She completed high school in Los Angeles and then enrolled in Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, where she studied politics, with a minor in film studies (B.A., 2005). Finding herself drawn to telling untold stories through film, she then attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (B.A., 2010). Her graduate film was the short movie