Chloé Zhao’s latest film Nomadland, which made history at the Golden Globes Awards a week ago, has been censored online in China due to the director’s past comments about the country.
Nomadland was quietly brushed off from the Chinese web on Friday, days after nationalist backlash flared online over doubts about her citizenship and a statement she made to a US magazine nearly a decade ago.
The backlash was unexpected as the plot of Nomadland has nothing to do with China. The move presently is not about the storyline of the film but the politics behind the scenes. Earlier, Christopher Robin was obstructed from being released in China for political reasons, as Winnie the Pooh became an emblem of opposition groups against Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
“In the future, Hollywood won’t dare to let Chinese people shoot movies or set foot in Chinese topics anymore—you’ll never be able to guess where the minefields are,”
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With the abrupt online clean-up gestures that the Frances McDormand-starrer drama’s theatrical outing is in peril. Earlier this week, official state media outlets had prominently honored Zhao’s historic Golden Globes win on Sunday as a point of pride for China. Nomadland was permitted for an April 23 restricted theatrical release from the country’s National Arthouse Alliance of Cinemas (NAAC) in February.
However, many in China have resorted to online blogging platforms since Monday demanding to know her nationality, inflamed by the thought that they shouldn’t applaud her achievement if she isn’t a Chinese national.
Their fire was further aroused by an interview that Zhao (born in Beijing) gave to Filmmaker magazine in 2013. She explained that she was attracted to her early subjects about the American heartland because of her upbringing in China and “being in a place where there are lies everywhere.” The magazine erased the section in mid-February, days before the Nomadland China release date was declared. The magazine has not acknowledged repeated requests for comment.
While Nomadland wasn’t anticipated to be a big box-office hit in China due to its mainly American subject matter, it does become a problem with Zhao’s next big feature film, Marvel Studios’ Eternals.
Zhao is presently serving as the director of the forthcoming Marvel superhero film Eternals, for which China will be a major overseas market. With a cast including stars like Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, and Kumail Nanjiani, it is scheduled for a US release on Nov 5.
About Nomadland
Nomadland is a 2020 American drama film directed, written, and edited by Chloé Zhao. It stars Frances McDormand as a woman who leaves home to travel around the American West. It also features David Strathairn in a supporting role, as well as real-life nomads Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells, as fictionalized versions of themselves. The film is based on the 2017 non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder.
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