The Guardian

‘I’ve always been an outsider’: Chloé Zhao’s roundabout route to the Oscars red carpet

Ten minutes into Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland an itinerant Amazon packer hoists up her shirt-sleeve to show off her tattoos. Her favourite, she says, is a lyric from Morrissey’s song Home Is a Question Mark: “Home – is it just a word or is it something you carry within you?” This question echoes through the story that follows, as Nomadland trails its band of ageing, displaced RV and van-dwellers across the midwest from one seasonal gig to the next. Quite likely it resonates with the film’s director as well.

“My life has been so transient and fast-moving,” the Mexican film-maker Alfonso Cuarón, summing up a path that has led her ever-westward, first from Beijing to

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