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Fern ( Frances McDormand ) is grieving a life that’s been ripped away from her. It seems like she was relatively happy in Empire, Nevada, one of those many American small towns built around industry. When the gypsum plant there closed, the town of Empire quite literally closed with it. In six months, its entire zip code was eliminated. In this nightmare state, Fern’s husband died, leaving her completely alone and, well, she likes the word “houseless” more than “homeless.” Hitting the road in search of work as a seasonal employee at an Amazon center, Fern starts living in her van, eventually getting involved with a group of modern nomads, people who sometimes form makeshift communities, but she inevitably ends up alone again, traversing the American landscape. Fern is the unforgettable center of Chloé Zhao ’s masterful “Nomadland,” a movie that finds poetry in the story of a seemingly average woman. It is a gorgeous film that’s alternately dreamlike in the way it captures the beauty of this country and grounded in its story about the kind of person we don’t usually see in movies. I love everything about it.

Filmmakers and artists in general have a tendency to judge their characters. Here’s the good guy, here’s the bad guy. Here’s the problem that needs to be solved for the leading man or lady to be happy by the end of the movie or damned because of their bad behavior. There’s a much lesser version of the true story of “Nomadland,” based on the book by Jessica Bruder , that does all of this, melodramatizing Fern’s story into one of redemption. Fern doesn’t think she needs to be redeemed or saved, and Zhao doesn’t push buttons in an attempt to make us feel sorry for her either, while also somehow never underestimating the loneliness and sadness of her situation. The result is a film that earns its emotions, which come from genuine, honest empathy more than anything else.

Of course, this is impossible with a lesser actress than Frances McDormand anchoring every single scene. We see this world through McDormand’s performance, one of the most subtle and refined of her career. Fern is such a stunningly complex woman, someone who can be restless to a degree that feels self-sabotaging but is also incredibly warm and open with her people. She makes friends everywhere she goes, like the ladies she goes to an RV show with, or the young man she gives a light to. McDormand does so much with a glance or a wry smile that other actors couldn’t convey with an entire monologue. We see a whole life in this performance. Every beat and every choice has history behind it. It’s one of the best career performances from one of our best actresses. It’s just breathtaking.

And Zhao matches what she’s getting from McDormand in “Nomadland” with her stunning technical prowess. She reunites with Joshua James Richards , the cinematographer on “ The Rider ,” and the pair again find beauty in the landscapes of the country. Fern’s journey takes her all across the United States and Zhao and Richards lean into the majesty of the world around her with long shots of the horizon, most of them seemingly shot at the magic hour. It’s a beautiful film just to experience, and it’s not just in “beauty shots.” Everything about the visual language of "Nomadland" is striking—just the way Richards and Zhao slowly glide their camera with Fern through a community of van-dwellers can feel lyrical while somehow never losing the truth and grit of the moment either. It’s honestly hard to figure out how Zhao has made a film that’s this beautiful in its compositions and somehow still feels like it has dirt under its fingernails. A moving score by Ludovico Einaudi that’s easily my favorite of the year adds to the poetry of it all.

Most of the people that Fern meets along the way in “Nomadland” are non-actors, people who live this life on the road. (The only other familiar face belongs to David Strathairn , perfect as a man who Fern befriends.) There’s an improvised, natural quality to Fern’s conversations and interactions that grounds the film. These modern nomads tell stories of not wanting to die with their dreams of traveling the country unfilled, share tips on how to live life safely on the road, and support each other in ways that neighbors with traditional homes rarely do. “Nomadland” becomes more than just a fictional account of a fascinating woman as it also reminds us how many people are out there with stories to tell and dreams going unfulfilled. And yet it never wallows in grief or misery.

Of course, grief is always there, hitching a ride. It can be in the way McDormand smiles when she hears someone else speak of their lost loved one. She’s probably thinking of her husband. And there’s an interpretation of “Nomadland” that it’s the story of a woman running from grief, unmoored from society after everything she knew up and vanished. Part of that is true. But it is also the story of so many Americans who feel lost nowadays, unsure of where to go next or what tomorrow will bring. The images of “Nomadland” that feel like answers to the unrest and anxiety of 2020 are the ones that contain so much beauty about the simplest things—the smile of a friend, a dip in a river, a kind gesture of a stranger. We may not all be able to relate directly to the struggles of Fern, but we can all feel that sense of unease and uncertainty. Maybe we should hit the road. 

This review was filed in conjunction with the premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is being republished for its debut in theaters and on Hulu today, February 19th, 2021. 

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Nomadland (2021)

Rated R for some full nudity.

108 minutes

Frances McDormand as Fern

David Strathairn

Charlene Swankie

Writer (book)

• Jessica Bruder

Cinematographer

• Joshua James Richards
• Ludovico Einaudi

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‘Nomadland’ Review: The Unsettled Americans

Frances McDormand hits the road in Chloé Zhao’s intimate, expansive portrait of itinerant lives.

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‘Nomadland’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director chloé zhao narrates a scene from her movie featuring frances mcdormand and david strathairn..

Hi, I’m Chloé Zhao. I am the writer, director, editor, and one of the producers of “Nomadland.” “Hi, may I help you?” This scene was shot in the Badlands National Park where Fern is doing a summer camp hosting job. This is a situation where we mix professional and non-professional actors. There are two actors in the scene. There is Fern played by Frances McDormand. Then there’s Dave played by David Strathairn “This is going to be really exciting.” Some of the people that are playing the tourists, they’re actually tourists at the National Park. The one thing I think is interesting to talk about in this scene is everything is scripted and staged. But through casting, cinematography and the editing, our goal is to make you feel as if this is really happening. As if she just showed up and improvised everything. The time of day is very important in shooting a scene like this in the Badlands. The texture of the rocks in the Badlands looks very different, the colors throughout the day. So it’s that last 25 minutes when the sun already go behind the rocks. It was of the most intense magic hour hustles in the film. Fran has such an interesting body language that I love, that we wanted to bring into Fern. She reminds me of Buster Keaton or Chaplin. You just love seeing how she walks and runs and interacts with the space. And I think that it brings a little bit of humor to it. Frances is the one that came up with those white sneakers that she was wearing. “Find anything interesting?” “Rocks!” And then she’s got these little pink socks, almost like a child getting lost. It’s the first time that she’s really embracing being a traveler. And enjoying the exploration. So in this scene she’s exploring, but she’s also lost at the same time.

By A.O. Scott

[Follow live coverage of the 2021 Oscars .]

“People wish to be settled,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. “Only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.” This tension between stability and uprooting, between the illusory consolations of home and the risky lure of the open road, lies at the heart of “ Nomadland ,” Chloé Zhao’s expansive and intimate third feature.

Based on Jessica Bruder’s lively, thoroughly reported book of the same name , “ Nomadland ” stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a fictional former resident of a formerly real place. The movie begins with the end of Empire, Nev., a company town that officially went out of existence in late 2010, after the local gypsum mine and the Sheetrock factory shut down. Fern, a widow, takes to the highway in a white van that she christens with the name Vanguard and customizes with a sleeping alcove, a cooking area and a storage space for the few keepsakes from her previous life. Fern and Vanguard join a rolling, dispersed tribe — a subculture and a literal movement of itinerant Americans and their vehicles, an unsettled nation within the boundaries of the U.S.A.

Bruder’s book, unfolding in the wake of the Great Recession, emphasizes the economic upheaval and social dislocation that drive people like Fern — middle-aged and older; middle-class, more or less — out onto the road. Reeling from unemployment, broken marriages, lost pensions and collapsing home values, they work long hours in Amazon warehouses during the winter holidays and poorly paid stints at national parks in the summer months. They are footloose but also desperate, squeezed by rising inequality and a frayed safety net.

Zhao smooths away some of this social criticism, focusing on the practical particulars of vagabond life and the personal qualities — resilience, solidarity, thrift — of its adherents. Except for McDormand and a few others, nearly all of the people in “ Nomadland ” are playing versions of themselves, having made the slightly magical transition from nonfiction page to nondocumentary screen. They include Bob Wells , the magnificently bearded mentor to legions of van dwellers, who summons them to an annual conclave — part cultural festival, part self-help seminar — in Quartzsite, Ariz.; Swankie, an intrepid kayaker, problem solver and nature lover; and Linda May, a central figure in Bruder’s book who nearly steals the movie as Fern’s best friend.

Friendship and solitude are the poles between which Zhao’s film oscillates. It has a loose, episodic structure, and a mood of understated toughness that matches the ethos it explores. Zhao, who edited “Nomadland” in addition to writing and directing, sometimes lingers over majestic Western landscapes and sometimes cuts quickly from one detail to the next. As in “The Rider,” her 2018 film about a rodeo cowboy in South Dakota, she’s attentive to the interplay between human emotion and geography, to the way space, light and wind reveal character.

She captures the busyness and the tedium of Fern’s days — long hours behind the wheel or at a job; disruptions caused by weather, interpersonal conflict or vehicle trouble — without rushing or dragging. “Nomadland” is patient, compassionate and open, motivated by an impulse to wander and observe rather than to judge or explain.

Fern, we eventually discover, has a sister (Melissa Smith), who helps her out of a jam and praises her as “the bravest and most honest” member of their family. We believe those words because they also apply to McDormand, whose grit, empathy and discipline have never been so powerfully evident. I don’t mean to suggest that this is an awards-soliciting display of acting technique, a movie star’s bravura impersonation of an ordinary person. Quite the opposite. A lot of what McDormand does is listen, giving moral and emotional support to the nonprofessional actors as they tell their stories. Her skill and sensitivity help persuade you that what you are seeing isn’t just realistic, but true.

Which brings me, somewhat reluctantly, to David Strathairn, who plays a fellow wanderer named Dave. He’s a soft-spoken, silver-haired fellow who catches Fern’s eye and gently tries to win her affection. His attempts to be helpful are clumsy and not always well judged — he offers her a bag of licorice sticks when what she wants is a pack of cigarettes — and although Fern likes him pretty well, her feelings are decidedly mixed.

Mine too. Straitharn is a wonderful actor and an intriguing, nontoxic masculine presence, but the fact that you know that as soon as you see him is a bit of a problem. Our first glimpse of Dave, coming into focus behind a box of can openers at an impromptu swap meet, is close to a spoiler. The vast horizon of Fern’s story suddenly threatens to contract into a plot. He promises — or threatens — that a familiar narrative will overtake both Fern and the movie.

To some degree, “Nomadland” wishes to be settled — wants not necessarily to domesticate its heroine, but at least to bend her journey into a more-or-less predictable arc. At the same time, and in a fine Emersonian spirit, the movie rebels against its own conventional impulses, gravitating toward an idea of experience that is more complicated, more open-ended, more contradictory than what most American movies are willing to permit.

Zhao’s vision of the West includes breathtaking rock formations, ancient forests and wide desert vistas — and also iced-over parking lots, litter-strewn campsites and cavernous, soulless workplaces. Against the backdrop of the Badlands or an Amazon fulfillment center, an individual can shrink down to almost nothing. The nomad existence is at once an acknowledgment of human impermanence and a protest against it.

Fern and her friends are united as much by the experience of loss as by the spirit of adventure. So many of the stories they share are tinged with grief. It’s hard to describe the mixture of sadness, wonder and gratitude that you feel in their company — in Fern’s company, and through her eyes and ears. It’s like discovering a new country, one you may want to visit more than once.

Nomadland Rated R. Living rough, and talking that way too. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters and on Hulu . Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.

A.O. Scott is a critic at large and the co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Movie Reviews

In 'nomadland,' discover the joy and sorrow of the road less traveled.

Justin Chang

Restless and tired of ordinary life, Fern (Frances McDormand) takes to the road in Nomadland. Searchlight Pictures hide caption

Restless and tired of ordinary life, Fern (Frances McDormand) takes to the road in Nomadland.

Chloé Zhao's amazing new movie, Nomadland , begins with an elegy for Empire, Nev., one of those old-fashioned company towns that thrived during America's post-World War II manufacturing boom. But in 2011, in the wake of a devastating global recession, the local gypsum mine shut down and Empire became a ghost town, displacing hundreds of residents in the process.

Empire was a real place, but the main character in this movie is a fictional creation: She's a widow in her 60s named Fern, and she's played in a remarkable performance by Frances McDormand . We see Fern packing her things and leaving Empire behind. Over the next year or so we'll follow as she takes on work wherever she can find it, driving across the U.S. in a large van that will also be her home.

The journalist Jessica Bruder wrote about Empire and the larger phenomenon of modern-day American nomads in her 2017 book Nomadland , from which this movie was freely adapted. The film sets Fern adrift among these real-life transient workers, several of whom were featured in Bruder's book, and who tell their stories again here. It's hard to imagine another actor who could share the same spaces with them as casually as McDormand does, whether Fern is bubble-wrapping packages at an Amazon warehouse or mingling with other travelers in a crowded trailer park.

One of her new friends, Linda May, describes how crushing poverty almost led her to take her own life; fortunately, the presence of her two dogs made her reconsider. Another of the movie's memorable real-life characters is a gruff but compassionate woman named Swankie, who helps Fern change a flat tire and scolds her for not having a spare.

It's not the last time Fern will have car trouble. At one point, her van breaks down and she has to take it in for repairs. The mechanic recommends she skip the repairs and buy a different vehicle, but Fern declines, saying, "I can't do that. ... I live in there. It's my home."

Fern's use of the word "home" is telling. When someone offers her a place to stay for the night, she replies, "I'm not homeless; I'm just houseless." Without romanticizing a difficult way of life, Nomadland makes clear that not everyone hits the road due to financial desperation alone. Some, like Fern, have grown restless and tired of ordinary life for reasons they can't fully explain. As the movie follows her across the country, from Badlands National Park in South Dakota to a Nebraska sugar-beet field ready for harvest, we come to understand some sense of Fern's liberation but also the hardships of adapting to her new life.

Movie Interviews

Director chloé zhao's discusses 'the rider'.

The America we see in Nomadland is vast and open, stretching on forever toward horizons that are gorgeously shot by the cinematographer Joshua James Richards. But this America can also be a surprisingly small world, where Fern keeps running into the same people, who are headed to the same places in search of work, depending on the season.

The person she runs into most often is a guy named Dave, played by a charming David Strathairn, the only other name actor in this otherwise non-professional cast. Dave clearly has a crush on Fern, but she gently rebuffs his puppy-dog-ish overtures in a few sweetly funny scenes that almost push the movie into romantic-comedy territory.

Nomadland may have a somber Steinbeckian grandeur, but in these moments it also shows a disarmingly playful, even experimental streak. Some may wonder why writer-director Zhao didn't simply make a straightforward documentary about nomadic life. But there's something about the way she uses McDormand's star power, blurring fiction and nonfiction techniques, that gets at something deeper and more mysterious. As with The Rider , her 2018 film about a Native American rodeo cowboy, she invites the people in front of her camera into a creative collaboration, taking the stuff of their everyday lives and bending it into something strange and new. It's a fittingly inventive approach for a movie about people who have dramatically reinvented themselves.

Nomadland takes its time sinking in, but sink in it does. When I watched the movie a third time recently, I found it emotionally overpowering in ways that I'm still trying to get a handle on. It might have been the delicate ache of Ludovico Einaudi 's music that reduced me to tears, or the bone-deep conviction of McDormand's performance. Or it might just be that Nomadland seems to understand loss — material, emotional and spiritual loss — in a way that few movies do.

That may not sound like comfort viewing in these times of heartbreak and uncertainty, but this isn't a despairing film. It suggests that the road less traveled can yield joy as well as sorrow, and that it can fulfill a person's need for both solitude and community. We don't know what lies ahead for Fern by movie's end, but we do know that her journey isn't over.

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Nomadland Reviews

Ultimately, it’s not hard to connect with everything you see on screen because you can understand every character like they were someone you know.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Apr 4, 2024

This is truly her movie and she carries it on her shoulders without a single false note.

Full Review | Feb 23, 2024

An emotionally rich, painfully relevant film about the waning days of the American Dream.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2024

Zhao is a master at capturing people and their stories in such an authentic way that is usually water-downed in movies.

Full Review | Aug 30, 2023

One of the great pleasures of Nomadland is the consistently shrewd and perceptive manner in which Fern’s hidden depths and flinty pragmatics defy expectations

Full Review | Jul 28, 2023

Nomadland is a sobering tale of survival within the wake of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Nomadland offers a contemplative, enlightening, touching story about a nomad's life, starring real-life people that make this film much more special. Gorgeous cinematography and a lovely score tremendously elevate the movie.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 24, 2023

Joshua James Richards’ masterful cinematography shines in this intimate film, which transcends the portrayal of the bleak nomad lifestyle and instead delves into a captivating character study.

Full Review | Jun 27, 2023

Zhao’s stunning, masterful work in Nomadland looks to be rewarded as one of the most unique and inspired choices by the Academy in this category...

Full Review | May 2, 2023

Members of the supporting cast are real-life nomads playing fictionalized versions of themselves. See this extraordinary piece of filmmaking...

Full Review | Mar 31, 2023

Zhao’s follow-up to the brilliant The Rider hits every single mark dead center. It is an odyssey of real-life people symbolized in one person, encapsulated in Frances McDormand’s best performance since Fargo.

Full Review | Mar 6, 2023

Nomadland revels in stark realism, and the real people that are used really add to the atmosphere and overall feel of the film. The story ultimately becomes less interesting as it moves along...

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jan 22, 2023

Between non-fiction and non-documentary, Nomadland plays with the narrative shortcomings to dazzle us instead through contemplation... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 18, 2022

Remarkably mindful, stoic, and just so beautiful.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 11, 2022

Nomadland is an earnest and empathetic epic on an intimate scale, powered by Chloé Zhao's delicate direction and Frances McDormand’s poignant lead performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 1, 2022

By elevating our circumstantial compulsion to the nobility of a purpose, Nomadland transforms from a film of our times to a timely film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 26, 2022

From a Nevada desert through the South Dakota Badlands to the Pacific coast, “Nomadland” is a work of visual poetry, but it’s the human element at its core that gives it such an emotional pull.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Nomadland challenges us and presses on the most dire questions of our times. It examines what is left behind in the wreckage of our broken world.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 17, 2022

The magic of that bigger canvas is that you become a different person for having watched Nomadland. Knowing these people and places changes your perspective.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | May 13, 2022

What is presented as a fulfilling alternative lifestyle embraced by people living on the fringes of society becomes a portrait of a broken person using the road to escape her past and shield herself from emotional ties.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 17, 2022

Review: Frances McDormand is at her finest in ‘Nomadland,’ a sublime ode to American wanderlust

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials .

Near the beginning of “Nomadland,” Chloé Zhao’s wise, wistful hymn to the open road, Fern (Frances McDormand) drives her van through a chilly stretch of Nevada desert, singing to herself as the wind lashes her windows. Her destination is an Amazon warehouse where she will spend weeks bubble-wrapping and sealing packages for delivery, a grueling godsend of a job that will help her and many other itinerant workers get through the rough winter months ahead. The song she’s singing is “What Child Is This?,” a seasonally appropriate choice that sent my thoughts drifting back centuries to another group of wanderers, seeking shelter from a world that seems oblivious to their sufferings and ignorant of their worth.

“Nomadland,” which will begin a weeklong virtual run Friday before opening more widely in February, does bear a passing (and sometimes amusing) resemblance to a modern-day nativity play. Fern, played by McDormand at the plainspoken peak of her powers, is a widow in her 60s with no children to speak of, though at one point she does awkwardly cradle a sleeping infant. There is no transcendence at the end of her long, harrowing journey, but there are unexpected gifts, guardian angels and places of refuge. It would be hard to overlook the spiritual presence — a good word for it would be “grace” — that hovers over every frame of this movie and the spare, wrenching story it has to tell.

Sometimes that grace manifests itself in the unobtrusive beauty of Joshua James Richards’ widescreen images, in the gentle curve of a highway or the sunlight gleaming over a crowded RV park. (It also manifests itself in the plaintive musical score, excerpted from the work of the Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi.) We sense Fern’s gratitude as she tucks into a hot cup of chili with other hungry travelers, or her satisfaction when she glues together the broken pieces of a plate, a cherished gift from her father. “OK,” she says, appraising her good-enough handiwork. Like her fellow nomads, she’ll take every scrap of grace she can get.

The movie begins in the winter of 2011, some time after the death of Fern’s husband, Bo, and the collapse of Empire, Nev., the U.S. Gypsum-owned factory town where they lived for decades. Fern may be a fictional construct, but Empire’s history is real: When the local Sheetrock plant shut down in December 2010, the whole town followed suit, leaving hundreds without jobs or homes, and spurring some to embark on an entirely new way of life. Setting out across the country in vans and RVs, they joined a movement of self-described “workampers,” seeking employment, community and liberation — a phenomenon chronicled at length by the journalist Jessica Bruder in her 2017 nonfiction book, “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.”

“Nomadland” the movie, which won the top prizes at the recent Venice and Toronto film festivals , is less an adaptation of Bruder’s work than a free-form conversation with it. In addition to writing and directing, Zhao served as her own editor, and she has shaped the story as a series of discrete, offhand moments, keeping both Fern and the movie in continual motion. Fluid, inventive and even playful in ways that belie its generally somber tone, “Nomadland” exists at that blurry juncture where fiction and nonfiction meet — a well-traveled zone that is nonetheless still rife with artistic possibilities, as filmmakers as far-flung as Jia Zhangke and Pedro Costa are still discovering. As she’s demonstrated in her earlier features, “The Rider” (2017) and “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” (2015), Zhao belongs to the same cinematic tradition, one that she advances here with masterly assurance.

Many of the smiling, careworn faces we see in “Nomadland” belong to real-life nomads, some of whom were featured in Bruder’s book. Not all the stories they share here are strictly true — Zhao is both a rigorous realist and a stealth illusionist — but they tell them with a jaundiced wit and a sturdy conviction that draws no distinction between acting and simply being. Some of them talk about life-altering traumas they’ve experienced, or long-deferred dreams they decided to pursue before it was too late. More than one testifies to the brutality of an American economy that ravaged their savings and left them with nowhere — which is to say, everywhere — to go.

Some of the most memorable supporting players are women roughly Fern’s age, like the hardy Linda May, whom we first meet at the Amazon warehouse, and who shares about how financial desperation once almost drove her to take her own life. (Her dogs, Coco and Doodle, made her reconsider.) And then there’s Swankie, a gruff, generous-spirited woman who helps Fern change a flat tire and berates her for not having a spare: “You could die out here!” Swankie herself has long since resigned herself to that fate: Knowing her time may be short, she’s chosen to spend her remaining months enjoying the peace and freedom of life on the road.

That freedom, of course, is often all too conditional. The white van that Fern calls home — she actually calls it Vanguard — has been ingeniously tricked out with all the amenities she needs: a mattress, a side table and a bucket into which she violently relieves herself, in one of McDormand’s earthier bits of business. But her van is also a continual source of worry, whether it’s an engine that suddenly won’t start or a stranger rapping on her window, urging her to move it along.

And move it along she does. Fern heads to South Dakota’s magnificently craggy Badlands National Park, where she picks up trash on the campgrounds, and later to a Nebraska field, where she takes part in the fall sugar-beet harvest. There are no on-screen titles to identify all the places Fern visits; sometimes you can figure them out based on storefront signs, scraps of dialogue or especially distinctive landscapes. Or you can just let the vistas wash over you, losing yourself in Zhao’s neo-Steinbeckian vision of America: More than once, Fern walks down empty streets and past abandoned storefronts, remnants of once-thriving civilizations that time and capitalism ultimately forgot.

The America of “Nomadland” is vast and gorgeously desolate, stretching on forever toward dusky horizons. It’s also a surprisingly small world, where workampers following the same migratory patterns have a habit of bumping into each other. Zhao introduces a sly variation on this idea in the character of Dave (David Strathairn), a bumbling charmer whom Fern keeps running into, and whose unreciprocated attraction to her is sweetly obvious from their first RV-park encounter. Strathairn and McDormand’s scenes together are so charming and low-key sexy — his puppy-dog persistence keeps bumping up against her stubborn resolve — that you may wonder if “Nomadland” is about to slip its road-movie bonds and slide into full-blown romantic comedy.

It doesn’t, exactly, though I suspect Zhao could have pulled it off in a movie that eludes easy categorization at every turn. Some may emerge from “Nomadland” feeling both moved and slightly puzzled, wondering why a picture so at ease with documentary techniques couldn’t have just been a documentary, rather than placing a two-time Oscar winner front and center. Was that decision a misguided bid for prestige, a classic Hollywood compromise in the mold of one of Terrence Malick’s A-list abstractions? McDormand may be the most unadorned of movie stars, but her flinty screen presence is as forceful and recognizable as that of any actor working today. For all the mundane things she does in this movie — scrub walls, clean toilets, shovel beets, operate a power drill — the one thing she doesn’t do, and perhaps can’t do, is vanish into her own skin.

And this inability, far from proving fatal to Zhao’s experiment, is utterly crucial to its success. “Nomadland” isn’t just a chronicle of lives on the margins; in showing us individuals who have retreated from the mainstream, blazed their own trails and forged their own identities, it becomes its own hauntingly idiosyncratic act of creation. McDormand doesn’t disappear into Fern; she’s revealed by Fern, and Fern is revealed by her. The innate kinship between character and actor is as obvious as their shared first initial. (We never learn Fern’s surname, except that it starts with “McD.”) And while the qualities we often associate with a McDormand performance may be tamped down here — the salty comic aggression, the steely refusal to back down — they persist nonetheless in Fern’s ever-watchful gaze and thin, guarded smile.

We can read those qualities like a map, and they lead us deeper inward, giving shape and form to the vague personal history that brought Fern to this point. There are other hints of that history, too, in the movie’s circular narrative structure and in the late-emerging character of Fern’s sister, Dolly (Melissa Smith), who briefly opens a window onto their tetchy yet tender relationship. At one point Dolly, sympathetically defending her sister’s way of life to some skeptical friends, likens Fern to the early American pioneers, a comparison that feels both accurate and woefully inadequate.

Fern may belong to a nomadic tradition, but tradition alone can’t account for her deep inner restlessness. She accepts, without having to explain, her own compulsions and contradictions: the way she recoils from a soft, warm bed as if it were the most alienating thing in the world, or the fact that she yearns for both the comforts of solitude and the company of strangers. You feel grateful to have been one of those strangers, floating above and alongside Fern, taking a strange satisfaction in her persistence. It is good that she continues to seek — and that perhaps someday, somewhere, she will find.

‘Nomadland’

Rating: R, for some full nudity Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes Playing: In general release where theaters are open; also streaming on Hulu

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Nomadland Review

A stunning film from eternals director chloé zhao..

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Nomadland is a radiant celebration of humanity and community. Chloé Zhao takes the seeds of real stories and nurtures them with location settings, real people, and a non-judgmental eye at a misunderstood American subculture. Watching this film, I was swept away from my comfy but small apartment to the sprawling but intimidating expanses of the American West made a silent sidekick to a rebel riding a rickety van instead of a trusty steed. While some will no doubt lament this film's wandering and willfully slow pace, it can be enchanting and transporting if you surrender to its sway. Nomadland offers a ticket to a ride few might dare to take in real life, yet many can now revel thanks to Zhao's thoughtful and cinematic exploration. It's dizzying to imagine how her skills and style might translate to The Eternals, but that is a question for another time. For now, believe the hype: Nomadland is one of the best films of 2020.

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Unforgettable Frances McDormand drama Nomadland finds the heart of America: Review

Leah Greenblatt is the critic at large at Entertainment Weekly , covering movies, music, books, and theater. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and has been writing for EW since 2004.

If there were a Marlboro Woman, she might look like Frances McDormand 's Fern: flinty, unfettered, free to roam. But Fern's home on the range is a van, and her itinerant life — as captured in Chloé Zhao 's spare, extraordinary new drama Nomadland — is less a choice than a semipermanent condition of a nation whose safety net has evaporated.

Though her character is Zhao's creation, the movie (joint-premiering tonight at the Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival ) is populated by real people from the non-fiction book the script is based on, Jessica Bruder's 2017 Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century . They're senior citizens, mostly, or folks in late middle age, cut loose by the Great Recession and compelled to carve what they can from a gig economy. In a different world maybe, they'd be loading into an Airstream to visit the grandkids or see the Grand Canyon; instead they're stacking boxes in 12-hour shifts at Amazon warehouses, filling the shelves at Home Depot, manning fry stations at fast-food restaurants — whatever it takes to scrape out enough for gas and groceries.

Fern doesn't want to leave her home in Empire, Nev., but staying isn't really an option: Her late husband is gone, and following the shutdown of the local gypsum plant, the place essentially cancels itself out; even the ZIP code is discontinued. ( This really happened, in 2011 ; the town has since been partially reopened.) So she packs most of what she has in storage, and puts the rest in her little white cargo van — a space that will soon become kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and portable living room.

There's good money at Amazon through the Christmas rush, but an uninsulated van is no place to spend the holidays in subzero Nevada, and a casual invitation from a warehouse friend steers her south to Arizona. That's where her fellow nomads have gathered, and where she meets a kind, crinkly-eyed man named Dave (the excellent David Strathairn , one of the few professionals in the cast). It's also where she begins to put a shape and a name to what she's doing — a kind of found philosophy of road-dog freedom espoused by figures like the group's avuncular, gnome-like leader, Bob Wells (as himself).

What follows is mostly episodic; small, naturalistic scenes whose scale vacillates between intimate and grand: Fern squatting to pee by a fence post in the driving rain, loading crates of potatoes into a processor, pouring fresh coffee for her fellow campers at daybreak. (One monologue, delivered by a snowy-haired alum of the book named Swankie, is so lovely it nearly stops your heart.)

But to call the movie's arc uneventful would be to miss how carefully and exquisitely Zhao has composed it. Along with her 2017 breakout, The Rider , the 38-year-old writer and director is fast becoming one of our premier chroniclers of a certain kind of forgotten American: raw-boned, untethered, on the margins. It's hard, too, to picture any actress other than McDormand (who also has a producer credit) in the part. She doesn't just become Fern, she creates her: melding Zhao's screenplay to her own fierce character in a way that feels almost uncannily real. Together, they've managed to make that rare thing: a film that feels both necessary and sublime. A

Follow EW for the latest news, reviews, and more from the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival .

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Nomadland Review

19 Mar 2021

It would have been a huge punt to wager that perhaps the must-see film of 2021 would centre around a 61-year-old woman who shits in a bucket. But Chloé Zhao ’s film, built around a quietly stunning performance by Frances McDormand as a traveller living life on the margins, is a miracle of a movie, at once a state-of-a-nation address about a forgotten underclass from vanishing working-class communities and a personal portrait of quiet but formidable resilience. Zhao’s two previous films, Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider , have played out intimate, small-scale dramas with non-professional casts against the massive skies and expansive landscapes of America’s heartland. Nomadland continues these obsessions but elevates her art to a higher level, a beautifully made, clear-eyed view of notions around home, loss and the visibility of women all delivered with a huge emotional wallop.

Nomadland sees a departure from Zhao ’s previous M.O. in that this time around she’s working, albeit vaguely, from a source material (Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction work of the same name) and collaborating with a name actor. Frances McDormand is Fern, a resolute, hard-working widow who has lived her entire adult life in Empire, Nevada, which suffered a huge blow in 2011 after the gypsum mine that sustained the town closed. Zhao and McDormand establish Fern in economic but telling strokes — her nuzzling into her late husband’s overalls while sorting through his belongings in a lock-up speaks volumes about their relationship — as she travels around the country in an ergonomically designed van (named Vanguard), working any seasonal job she can, be it on a sorting line of an Amazon fulfilment centre, gathering a beet harvest or cleaning the loos at an RV park. But this is the genius of Fern: she is in no way a victim of economic circumstance, looking and taking work wherever she can get it. When she runs into a teenager she once tutored in a sports store, she rejects the offer of a roof over her head: “I’m not homeless, I’m just houseless. Not the same thing, right? Don’t worry about me.”

She is a filmmaker at once meticulous and soulful; unhurried, less a storyteller, more a compassionate collector of fleeting interactions

After an employment supervisor tells her she is not suitable for any of the jobs on her books, Fern joins one of the seminar camps of van-dwelling guru Bob Wells (like the majority of the cast, playing himself), learning the nomadic basics: stealth parking, “how to look after your own shit”, and the phrase, “See you down the road,” a less permanent way of saying goodbye. At this point Nomadland turns into a road movie, but not one that goes from A to B, instead ambling around the country. Zhao captures both the joys (the camaraderie amongst drifters, the ever-shifting beautiful views) and irritants (breaking down, buckets of shit) as Fern shares precious moments with her new acquaintance, the free-spirited Swankie, memorably playing herself.

Midway through it looks like Zhao is going to give into convention. At one stop-over, Fern meets mild-mannered traveller Dave ( David Strathairn at his most understated David Stratherniest) and there seems to be flicker of attraction between them, Zhao using the only two recognisable faces in the cast to draw them together. Despite Fern marvelling at Dave’s rig, the relationship develops, but not in the way you’d expect.

As in their previous collaborations, Zhao and regular DP Joshua James Richards find a beautiful middle ground between Terrence Malick realism and a more hard-bitten documentary veracity that poeticises but never sentimentalises the inaction, tying the characters intimately to their surroundings. Zhao also uses Italian piano maestro Ludovico Einaudi to score Fern’s inner states in increasingly affecting ways.

But Nomadland survives, then thrives, on two women. Frances McDormand delivers possibly the performance of a lifetime playing a woman living life on her own terms who is still trying to decide what those terms are. Working in Zhao’s semi-improvised world, she is more stripped-back than ever, blending in with and elevating non-professionals while gifting Fern a majestic melancholy. She is guided beautifully by Zhao, a kind of Agnès Varda -in-waiting, who imbues the whole film with a feel for the outsider. She is a filmmaker at once meticulous and soulful; unhurried, less a storyteller, more a compassionate collector of fleeting interactions and moments of solitude that coalesce into something beyond the sum of its parts. Not everyone will fall into Nomadland ’s slow, circular rhythms, but if you do, the result is transcendent.

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Economic Ruthlessness on the Open Road in “Nomadland”

By Anthony Lane

One of the things we learn from the films of Chloé Zhao is this: bad luck is the stuff that happens before a story begins. As “ The Rider ” (2018) gets under way, the hero—a young fellow named Brady—already has an angry gash in his head, having tumbled from his horse at a rodeo and taken a hoof to the skull. And now, at the start of “Nomadland,” which Zhao wrote and directed, we meet Fern ( Frances McDormand ), who no longer has a husband, a regular job, or a home. Well, she does have a home, but it’s a white van that she has adapted, with lots of storage space, to be her only dwelling. She calls it Vanguard.

Another takeaway from Zhao’s work: no land is more fertile than the border zone between documentary and fiction. Brady, for instance, is played by a real-life rider, also named Brady, from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota, and his wound is no invention. His sister, Lilly, who has Asperger’s, plays a version of herself. In the same vein, most of the folks in “Nomadland” are, as it were, true to themselves—genuine wanderers, recounting their experience as birds of passage, and radiating a singular blend of stringency and warmth. Thus, Linda, a smiling and capable figure with silver hair, is played by Linda May; Swankie, who has seven or eight months to live, and who hangs a skull and crossbones on the side of her van, is played by Swankie; and so on.

“Nomadland,” which won the main prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is based on the 2017 book of the same name , by Jessica Bruder. That is nonfiction, through and through: a deep delve, patiently researched, into the rising number of Americans for whom a stable existence is unaffordable. They may have been scathed by personal hardship, or spit out by the financial collapse of 2008 . Most of them are of riper years, weathered by a steady-humored stoicism, and they’ve shrugged off the burden of property ownership in favor of what’s known as wheel estate. According to the jargon, you can be a vandweller or, more specifically, a workamper, which means that you travel around in your R.V. in search of temporary jobs, some of which come with a place to park, plus access to power and water. It was Bruder who came across Linda, Swankie, and other nomads, and reported in detail on the pattern of their endurance; now they have migrated into Zhao’s movie and brought their weatherings with them. But what’s so dramatic about it? Why is it not a documentary?

In a word, because of Fern. She is a fictional creation, and she’s played by a bona-fide film star, albeit one with a hilariously low dose of airs and graces. (If McDormand receives an Oscar nomination for her pains, as she should, expect her to show up in Crocs.) One of the first actions that she is required to perform onscreen is to pee outside, in the middle of nowhere, on a freezing day. Later, an upset stomach forces her to excrete noisily into a bucket. At the other extreme, she gets to float naked in a creek, gazing up at the sky, with arms flung wide: a tranquil sight, though it doesn’t look especially healing or transcendent. It looks cold.

I tried to imagine another actress in the role, but soon gave up. Only someone as rooted and as resilient as McDormand, perhaps, can play so rootless a character. Fern used to live and to labor in Empire, Nevada, an old-school company town, owned by United States Gypsum. As we’re told at the outset of the film, 2011 marked the end of Empire; the plant was shut, and the town effectively died. Fern was married to a guy named Bo, but he, too, passed away. They had no children, and now it’s just her and Vanguard. At a sporting-goods store, she runs into a family she knows. “Are you still doing the van thing?” the mother asks, as if nobody could keep up such a life for long. “My mom says that you’re homeless, is that true?” her daughter says. Fern, unfazed, replies, “I’m just houseless. Not the same thing, right?”

Motion pictures, from their earliest days, have leaned toward people on the move. The medium is not made for staying still. It seems natural that Chaplin , left alone in the final shot of “The Circus” (1928), on a patch of waste ground marked by a circle where the big top stood, should not linger long, in reflective mood, but turn and amble away. As the iris closes around him, we don’t inquire where he might go next; what counts is the manner of his going. The same applies to Jack Nicholson, as Bobby Dupea, at the bitter end of “Five Easy Pieces” (1970), abandoning his girlfriend at the gas pumps, beside the Red Rooster Café, and hitching a ride on a logging truck—no wallet, no plans, not even a jacket, although, as the trucker says, where they’re headed will be colder than hell.

Fans of that film will recall that Bobby, whom we first see on a California oil rig, is a former classical pianist. It’s an odd conceit, yet we buy it, because of Nicholson. Something similar occurs in “Nomadland,” when Fern, in conversation with a shy young drifter, suddenly declaims a Shakespeare sonnet. The scene is both unlikely and sublime, and it compels us to reassess Fern’s motives. She was once a substitute teacher; is that not a portable skill? Couldn’t she search for a school that needs a new teacher, drive there, and begin again? Or—here’s the rub—has she gradually grown allergic to social norms and addicted to the open road? “All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular.” So says Huckleberry Finn , in the opening chapter of his adventures, and it’s as if his craving has filtered down to Fern.

No wonder the film is so tense. Fern is never attacked or robbed, thank heaven, yet the smell of possible danger hangs around. Notice how she stares ahead as she eats, like a guard on watch. In everyday dealings, her courtesy is a kind of armor, and, when she’s offered the chance to settle, in a safe haven, she rebuffs it. One day, after her van has broken down, she visits her sister, Dolly (Melissa Smith), who lives on a pleasant suburban street—an alien planet, compared with the badlands and the wilderness where Fern prefers to roam. “You left home as soon as you could,” Dolly says to her, remembering their childhood, and Fern, having borrowed cash, is soon gone again.

Then, there is Dave, a workamper, with too many miles on the clock. He’s played by David Strathairn, whom I initially failed to spot, not just because of his stiff white beard but also because of the diffidence with which he ducks in and out of the frame. Zhao is the foe of the meet-cute. Early on, Fern walks away from a whimpering dog and, contrary to the laws of cinematic gratification, does not go back to claim it; with Dave, who is in equal need of companionship, she proves no easier to sway. Now and then, their orbits intersect—in the kitchen at Wall Drug, say, in South Dakota, where he flips burgers and she scrapes grease off the grill. Like many nomads, Dave has fouled up his life. (How, exactly, we can’t be sure; but so expressive is Strathairn that we’re sure enough.) Not without trepidation, he is returning to his family for the birth of his grandson. Fern is invited to stop by, and so, at Thanksgiving, she rolls up, to the friendliest of welcomes. “You can stay,” Dave says. “Thanks, I need to do laundry,” she replies, though that isn’t what he had in mind. The bed in the guest room is so soft that Fern has no option but to go and sleep in her van. She leaves before anyone else is awake.

Somewhere, inside this lovely and desperate movie, there’s the ghost of a Western. Though people still gather around a campfire, their talk is of cancer and P.T.S.D. Instead of cowboys driving cattle to high pastures, Fern and her kindred spirits converge, in certain months, on an Amazon warehouse—still obeying the rhythm of the seasons, I guess, as they bubble-wrap junk and box it in time for Christmas. Bruder’s book called attention to the economic ruthlessness of the Amazon setup, and the effect of the toil on older employees; Zhao is more focussed on Fern, as she greets her fellow-drones at lunch, and slices banana onto her peanut-butter sandwich.

“Nomadland” is not primarily a protest. Rather, it maintains a fierce sadness, like the look in its heroine’s eyes, alive to all that’s dying in the West. That is why Zhao so often films at daylight’s decease, catching enormous skies of violet and rose, and why her fable speaks to us, in 2020, as John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath” did to audiences eighty years ago. Fern’s needs and rights are as basic as those of the Joad family, yet there was a breadth and an uplift to their yearning that has since dwindled to a speck. “Fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul,” Tom Joad said. “The one big soul that belongs to everybody.” Some hope. Fern has her own soul, and it’s hers alone, packed away tight in the van, together with her toothbrush and her chicken-noodle soup. On she goes. ♦

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‘Nomadland’ Review: To Roam, With Love

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

Imagine a place on the map so tied to its industries that when the work disappears, so does the place. This shouldn’t be so hard to imagine; it is, in so many ways, the story of America’s once-towering industrial cities. It could also describe the places beyond the gutted downtowns and main streets, areas whose populations hover in the low thousands, or hundreds, or even less — municipalities so diffuse that the eradication of the local identities, traditions, and people anchored to the geography can be literal. A zip code can be, as Chloé Zhao’s new film Nomadland puts it in an opening title card, “discontinued.” (The movie begins a one-week qualifying run in virtual cinemas today; it goes into wide release next February.) “On January 31, 2011,” it tells us, “due to a reduced demand for sheetrock, U.S. Gypsum shut down its plant in Empire, Nevada, after 88 years.” And with that, Empire was no more. It’s an astonishing thing to think about, particularly in terms of what comes after for the town’s residents. If you need work to live, and if home is meant to be an anchor, who are you without either? 

It’s a question mired in a tangle of social presumptions, many of them privileged. But it’s precisely this set of presumptions, with their attitude of liberal concern, that Nomadland deftly and unexpectedly peels apart — even as its overriding sense of humane intentions would appear to be in line with them. The movie (which was not only directed, but also written, edited, and co-produced by Zhao) takes its title from Jessica Bruder’s 2017 book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century , an immersively reported work of nonfiction. Yet we can’t quite call the movie an “adaptation,” exactly. In line with the sparkling melange of fiction and non- that has, over the course of only three feature films, become Zhao’s trademark, her latest work takes elements of reality and mixes them with the honed dramatism of what a friend of mine calls a “ movie movie.” Which is to say: a plain old movie. 

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Zhao’s last project, The Rider (2017), starred the retired rodeo rider Brady Jandreau, as well as his immediate family and friends — none of them professional actors; all of them members of the Lakota Sioux nation who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation. It dropped all of them into a story somewhat like Jandreau’s own (minus the part where he becomes the star of a breakout festival-circuit movie). It’s eerie for playing somewhat like a funhouse distortion of movies like Muhammad Ali’s The Greatest (1977), which retells and mythologizes the story of the champ’s come-up as an athlete and man after the 1960 Olympics. Ali starred as himself; the movie builds toward the “Rumble in the Jungle,” a fight which, you may remember, Ali won. The Rider , by contrast, is the story of a hero-champion who’s suffered a devastating brain injury and can no longer ride, just like the real Jandreau. There’s no heroic Rumble here for him to reenact, no champion myth that will endure beyond the man himself. By the time the movie starts, that’s already the past. Instead, Zhao overwhelms us with another myth: an American West whose beauties and possibilities, so iconic and familiar from movies and legends, are sustained, but whose everyday realities have, in the interim, fallen far short of that dream.

The Rider is a western; Nomadland is not. It is nevertheless similarly invested in looking beyond the idea of a place toward the real lives at its center. Zhao one again relies on mixed methods, nonfiction rendered into compellingly realistic drama thanks to a cast of nonprofessional actors playing versions of themselves. The result is as stimulating and satisfying as it is iffy and curious — all healthy indications of an experiment at work. An unexpected benefit of having Bruder’s book to guide the filmmaker in this effort is that, for the readers of the book, some of the characters we meet will be familiar. There’s Linda May as the still-upbeat Linda, and Charlene Swankie as Swankie, and, playing a man named Bob, the 60-something internet personality Bob Wells , whose video dispatches on his YouTube channel (CheapRVLiving) have become a dedicated resource for similar people who live and migrate in vans and RVs as self-declared (even if not always by choice) nomads. 

Among them looms a veritable movie star. Frances McDormand plays Fern, a widower from the town formerly known as Empire, and a relative newcomer to the nomadic life, compared to the veteran wanderers she meets on her journey. Nomadland is essentially a slice of life, as experienced from season to season, with all the comings and goings one might expect, from one woman’s perspective. Her van — her home — is named Vanguard. And for the people in the life she once lived, there’s an assumption of misery to Fern’s fate. “I’m not homeless,” she says to a young woman she once mentored, in a clarifying tone. “I’m just … houseless. Not the same thing, right?”

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You might expect a movie that pivots on the difference, and hinges on such adventurous production choices, to have a playful, winking awareness. Nomadland , though far from joyless, is not a playful film. Much of that owes to the fact that the travelers of its title are all of a certain age: all of them are boomers, and, per Bruder’s book, many of them were victims of 2008’s stock-market crash. Fern is one such woman. She is, in McDormand’s dependably humane and capable depiction, full of life, memories, desires that confront her needs. But the poles pulling her to and fro are not purely emotional; like everyone, she moves with the work, packs up when it dries up, commits herself to the long haul of this life. You never sense outright regret, which is key. 

But the movie also avoids reducing her to the plot device that a movie star, doing her best to fit in among a mobile working class, could easily become. Fern is not merely a thread that guides us through the material of this movie’s various nonfictions, the campfire chats between RVers, the actual (and, frankly, almost too rare) views we get of their labor. At the start of the movie, Fern is one of many older nomads enlisted to work for Amazon’s CamperForce, jobs specifically designed for this group of people. We get the requisite, fleet-footed montages of her at work on the factory floor, chatting over lunch, being a person. Other jobs she works give us other views: cleaning toilets at a trailer park, for example. 

McDormand has always seemed like the rare Oscar winner who’d be at home in most of our living rooms, rather than distractingly glamorous or magnetic. It works here. She is most certainly what pulls us through the story, a conceit made most explicit when the camera, tracking her from behind, wanders as she wanders. Zhao goes out of her way to anchor Fern in the felt-reality of these places. (While filming in the fall of 2018, the writer-director lived out of a van along with the rest of the crew.) Scenic miniatures of the character wandering through an RV park are delivered to us in subtly low-angle shots, below the characters’ eye lines. Typically the grammar of shots like these make the people onscreen loom large, their bodies hovering above us; classic westerns, full of heroic poses and the grandeur of their rocky desert environs, are full of these images. 

Zhao, however, achieves something thornier than heroism. At times, watching Fern make her way amid fellow nomads, the film seemingly sets us up to take heart at her integration into this world: She feels of a piece with it. Other times — such as, notably, when she’s being left behind, and long columns of mobile homes and customized vans pass her by as her friends move on to find more work — what emerges is a sense of isolation. 

It’s a tenuous cycle, a tenuous life. In one scene, Bob Wells likens the lot of them to work horses being put out to pasture, i.e., animals who are forced to fend for themselves at the margins, a feat only made possible if they do so collectively. “Economic times are changing,” he says. “My goal is to get the lifeboats out, and to get as many people into the lifeboats as I can.” As he says this, you see peoples’ homes on the move. Mobility is one of Zhao’s finer ingredients here. This is a film full of transitions: The comings and goings of migratory work seasons give the movie a structural backbone. The friendships Fern builds across the length of the film are all the more fragile for this. They’re as seasonal as the labor. 

For all the majesty and naturalistic realism of its imagery, Nomadland is nevertheless full of sublime, uncanny details that lift it somewhat above the fray. Fern’s camper driving through the tight walls of a mountain tunnel. Butterflies alighting on a mirror as she washes her face. Fern, nude, floating in a pool of water. These aren’t elevating, ironic details; they don’t (or shouldn’t) make us feel “better” about Fern’s situation by reminding us that, to invoke a memorable misfire on this subject, life is beautiful. 

In fact, one of the prevailing questions of this film — one of the things that catapults it above mere liberal experiment — is the question of choice. At one point, we meet Fern’s family, and we learn that she’d distanced herself from them long before the economic collapse that left her stranded (in their eyes). “You left a big hole by leaving,” her sister tells her. A man she meets and re-meets over the seasons, David (David Strathairn), becomes something of a new anchor for her. There’s possibility brewing between them. But he, too, has a choice to make. He, too, has a family willing to take him in. But will he be taken in? Will Fern? 

Giving us this lifestyle as, in part, a lifestyle — a choice — might run counter to the overwhelming sense of economic despair that leaves a great many people choiceless and, in terms of politics, voiceless. In Nomadland , however, it comes off as welcome complication. United and collaborative as they are in this life, the people of this film are individuals. They all have their own reasons, their own experiences. If the movie takes any unwelcome shortcut in this regard, it’s in its somewhat downplayed view of Amazon’s CamperForce program in particular, a job which, per Bruder , demanded of these 50 to 80 year olds that they traverse up to 15 miles a day on stark concrete; in warehouses that grew extremely hot in summer months; and for pay that, one imagines, could have been better, all things considered. It’s in somewhat skirting these working conditions that something like the choice to live this way, and the predilection to divorce oneself from home and family life as we generally conceive of them, grows harder to imagine. It would have been exhilarating to see a film as rich as Nomadland try.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Poignant, beautifully performed drama has mature themes.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Makes it clear that you don't necessarily need a p

While the nomads may not seem like role models, th

A few conversations about death by suicide, termin

Nonsexual nudity when Fern floats in the water (br

Occasional language includes "s--t," "Jesus Christ

Amazon is featured prominently.

Adults drink beer and wine at a bar or at a dinner

Parents need to know that Nomadland is writer-director Chloé Zhao's intimate drama starring Frances McDormand as Fern, an unemployed widow who joins a growing movement of older adults who live out of cars, vans, and RVs and do seasonal work across the country. It has mature themes about loneliness, financial…

Positive Messages

Makes it clear that you don't necessarily need a physical house to have a home -- that people and places and even a car can be "home." Strong emphasis on found families who help one another through difficult times, on benefits of self-sufficiency, travel, working just enough to live, not living to work.

Positive Role Models

While the nomads may not seem like role models, they're courageous and curious, and they help one another, trading everything from supplies to advice. Fern is intelligent, direct, determined. Dave is kind and generous. Linda, Bob, and the other people on the road are generous, self-sufficient, hard-working.

Violence & Scariness

A few conversations about death by suicide, terminal illness, possibility of death with dignity. A taser is displayed at a marketplace. A character dies (off-camera) and is memorialized (on-camera). Two scatological moments: Fern relieves herself outdoors, and another time she's sick and has to go immediately on top of a bucket inside her van.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Nonsexual nudity when Fern floats in the water (breasts, abdomen, genitals, legs). A couple dances and hugs.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional language includes "s--t," "Jesus Christ," "oh my God," "bitches," etc.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Adults drink beer and wine at a bar or at a dinner. A couple of characters smoke cigarettes; one smokes a cigar. One character discusses AA meetings.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Nomadland is writer-director Chloé Zhao's intimate drama starring Frances McDormand as Fern, an unemployed widow who joins a growing movement of older adults who live out of cars, vans, and RVs and do seasonal work across the country. It has mature themes about loneliness, financial instability, and restlessness, but it's also uplifting and hopeful. There's a beauty in the traveling and a sense that hard work should be valued, whatever that work might look like. One scene includes nonsexual nudity as Fern bathes in a lake, and in two other brief scenes, she uses either the outdoors or a bucket to relieve herself. The camera doesn't shy away from these personal moments. A few conversations include references to death, suicide, terminal illness, and depression, as well as the inability to live in one place after having a home on wheels/on the road. Families with older teens will have plenty to discuss after seeing the film -- from the nomadic lifestyle to the decline of American factory towns to the appeal of the open road. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 10 parent reviews

Beautiful Portrait of a Life Well-Lived

Ridiculous that this movie is rated r, what's the story.

When writer-director Chloé Zhao's NOMADLAND begins, audiences learn that, in 2011, the United States Gypsum Corporation closed its mine in the company town of Empire, Nevada. This decision essentially closed the town, forcing hundreds of families to leave. Fern ( Frances McDormand ) is a child-free widow who decides to renovate a commercial van into an RV and begin a nomadic lifestyle of living out of her car and taking short-term, seasonal work across the western half of the United States. During a decent-paying gig at an Amazon fulfillment center, Fern meets veteran road nomads like Linda May (playing herself), who encourages Fern to join Cheap RV Living YouTuber Bob Wells' annual Rubber Tramp Rendezvous in Arizona. There she learns tips for living on the road, swaps supplies, and befriends even more folks (most playing themselves) who live the nomad lifestyle, including Dave ( David Strathairn ), who seems smitten with her. Based on Jessica Bruder's nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, the drama follows Fern as she travels to various towns doing everything from waitressing to camp hosting to working on a beet farm.

Is It Any Good?

McDormand gives one of the quietest, most powerful performances of her career as a woman living on and discovering the joys of the road in this affecting, memorable drama. Because it features real members of the "home on wheels" community -- several of whom are the same nomads featured in Bruder's source article and book -- Nomadland has a documentary-like feel, capturing the various bittersweet reasons that these folks have given up staying in one place, retiring on Social Security, and paying oversized mortgages or rents. Joshua James Richards' outstanding cinematography highlights the lush landscapes of every town that Fern temporarily calls home. The American Dream may have failed Fern and her friends, but now they get to experience the natural beauty of the United States, even as it contrasts with the occasionally dirty work they take to have that privilege.

Zhao and McDormand's creative partnership here is remarkable. McDormand, who's also one of the film's producers, is peerless as Fern. It's difficult to imagine almost anyone else in her generation excelling in the part, except for perhaps her old Raising Arizona co-star and friend, Holly Hunter . Ever the character actor, Strathairn is excellent as Dave, who wants to spend as much time by Fern's side as possible. But Fern isn't as interested in romance as she is in friendship, and she'd rather sleep in Vanguard (her white van) than a guest room any day. As she says to a younger friend's well-meaning teen daughter who bumps into her in a store: "I'm not homeless, I'm just houseless -- not the same thing, right." Like Christopher McCandless before his fatal trip to Alaska in Into the Wild , Fern grows fond of her experiences on the road, tramping not in a train but in her van, being part of a community that lives in an unconventional but fulfilling way that allows them to see the vastness of the country on their own terms.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how relatively few movies center on women over 50 or on working-class characters. How does Nomadland depict older gig workers?

Discuss the character strengths that various characters demonstrate here. Why are gratitude , perseverance , and teamwork important?

What message does the movie share about the nature of work? How does Fern approach paying jobs?

Despite everyone's fierce independence, how do the characters here help and support one another?

Movie Details

• In theaters : January 29, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : April 13, 2021
• Cast : Frances McDormand , David Strathairn , Linda May
• Director : Chloé Zhao
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Asian directors, Female actors, Polynesian/Pacific Islander actors
• Studio : Searchlight Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Friendship
• Character Strengths : Gratitude , Perseverance , Teamwork
• Run time : 108 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some full nudity
• Awards : Academy Award , Common Sense Selection , Golden Globe
• Last updated : January 27, 2023

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‘Nomadland’ Review: Frances McDormand and Chloé Zhao Create Magic in a Lyrical Road Movie

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. Searchlight Pictures releases the film in select theaters and streaming on Hulu on February 19.

“ Nomadland ” is the kind of movie that could go very wrong. With Frances McDormand as its star alongside a cast real-life nomads, in lesser hands it might look like cheap wish fulfillment or showboating at its most gratuitous. Instead, director Chloé Zhao works magic with McDormand’s face and the real world around it, delivering a profound rumination on the impulse to leave society in the dust.

Zhao previously directed “The Rider” and “Songs My Brother Taught Me,” dramas that dove into marginalized experiences with indigenous non-actors in South Dakota. “Nomadland” imports that fixation with sweeping natural scenery to a much larger tapestry and a different side of American life. Inspired by Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century,” the movie follows McDormand as Fern, a soft-spoken widow in her early 60s who hits the road in her van, and just keeps moving. The movie hovers with her, at times so enmeshed in her travels that it practically becomes a documentary.

Set in 2011, “Nomadland” opens with Fern leaving the nascent ghost town of Empire, Nev. after a sheetrock plant shuts town and the zip code is discontinued. At first, she enrolls in an Amazon CamperForce program designed to tap RV-based retirees for work. (McDormand actually worked in an Amazon factory for these scenes and they share DNA with Brett Story’s documentary short “CamperForce,” which focuses on an elderly couple that settles into the program.) When the paycheck can’t sustain Fern, she finds herself hurtling deeper into the complex ecosystem of life on the road.

The movie’s fascinating centerpiece involves an actual gathering of RV dwellers known as the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, overseen by nomadic guru Bob Wells (who plays himself). In short order, Fern is watching “beginner nomad” videos on YouTube and listening to proto-socialist lectures about “the tyranny of the dollar” alongside other 60-plus pariahs keen on embracing their liberated routine.

The golden desert curves around them from every direction, but “Nomadland” doesn’t pretend that Fern has gone on a mystical trip to Burning Man. Life on the move is tough, and Zhao reveals some of the most unglamorous details on that front: Fern pees on the side of the road, shits into a bucket, and one point gets stranded with a flat. She’s engaged in a delicate dance with the pressure to stabilize her life — lost at sea and grasping for a paddle, but always resisting the impulse to paddle to the shore.

A world apart from the foul-mouthed avenger of “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” McDormand turns Fern into a reluctant adventurer who oscillates from bursts of frustration to solemn asides, as her travels come to embody that constant prevarication. A former English teacher who bumps into one of her old students on the road (“Still doing that van thing?” the kid’s mother asks), Fern has a firm grasp of the literary dimension to her struggle, and that’s all the information necessary to grasp the romanticism she chases against dire odds. Her face tells the story so well that by the time she visits relatives who fill in details of her backstory, there’s little to explain.

At the RTR, Fern bumps into Dave (David Strathairn, the movie’s only other professional actor), whose appearance threatens to derail “Nomadland” with a shoddy meet-cute twist. A divorced dad fleeing from his family for other reasons, Dave embodies a number of clichés — but Fern’s disinterest in his advances leads the way. As the movie allows her to keep him at bay, their relationship doesn’t hijack the story. Dave comes and goes from Fern’s life, allowing her to contemplate the potential of settling down just enough to recognize why she’s moved past it.

“Nomadland” juggles a complex tone: It celebrates the vast scenery of a forgotten America, while acknowledging the wistful undercurrents of the people wandering through it. Ludovico Einaudi’s plaintive score drifts in and out as cinematographer Joshua James Richards follows Fern through expansive outdoor scenery as the emptiness takes on poetic ramifications. It could sink into the hackneyed concept of life as a journey more than destination, but Zhao’s understated screenplay (which turns on the passing observations of the real nomads Fern meets) resists pressure for heavy-handed revelations.

Instead, the movie often operates as a non-narrative character study, and many of its more textured moments could work just as well as a multiscreen museum installation. Fear not: “Nomadland” is still a real movie, with powerful bursts of anger and sorrow as Fern grows frustrated by her limited options and comes mighty close to exploiting the generosity around her. Though the spirit of Terrence Malick is prominent in Zhao’s lyrical style, “Nomadland” also calls to mind Ken Loach’s kitchen-sink realism for its depiction of lower-class angst clattering against the ambivalence of capitalism (consider the plight of the protagonist of “I, Daniel Blake”), not to mention Kelly Reichert’s visions of wayfaring loners (imagine Michelle Williams’ wanderer from “Wendy and Lucy,” all grown up and still no place to go).

Above all, it shows that Zhao (who somehow made the upcoming Marvel movie “Eternals” after shooting this ) excels at deconstructing mainstream conceptions of the American dream by reveling in the faces it ignores. While Fern carries every scene, Zhao frequently allows her unorthodox supporting cast to take charge. At the RTR, Fern bonds with an elderly woman (Charlene Swankie, a total discovery) who delivers a remarkable monologue about her mortality so staggering in its details that it turns into a short film on its own terms.

“Nomadland” relishes the nomads’ expansive universe, emphasizing the contrast between gaining freedom from society while feeling estranged at the same time. Ultimately, Zhao’s screenplay doesn’t repudiate Fern’s choices: The movie churns through a familiar saga of a woman who grows tired of her surroundings, but casts aside the pressure to conform to the traditional beats of that plight.

Fern’s story unfolds in small doses, never lingering in a single dilemma because Fern can only bother with it for so long before she’s ready to move on. At one point, Wells tells Fern that he never says goodbye to his nomadic peers, only “See you down the road.” Anyone waiting for a big moment won’t find one here: As Fern drives on, the movie embodies that line as a mission statement.

“Nomadland” premiered at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. 

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the  safety precautions   provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.

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Screen Rant

Nomadland review: chloé zhao's latest lives up to the hype.

Nomadland might tell an unconventional story, but thanks to Zhao's careful hand and McDormand's performance, it will resonate with all audiences.

Later this year (should movie theaters be open), Chloé Zhao will become the latest in a growing line of Marvel directors as her cosmic epic  Eternals finally rolls out. However, there's a good chance that won't even be her best film of the year. While  Nomadland is technically a 2020 release, it's debuting on Hulu and in theaters this year, meaning it will reach a greater audience now.  Nomadland and  Eternals couldn't feel farther apart, yet if the latter turns out with even half as much heart as the former, it will be a success. Zhao, along with leading actress Frances McDormand, has crafted something truly impressive with this film, which is based on Jessica Bruder's non-fiction novel of the same name.  Nomadland might tell an unconventional story, but thanks to Zhao's careful hand and McDormand's performance, it will resonate with all audiences.

Following the economic collapse of her small company town in Nevada, as well as the loss of her husband, Fern (McDormand) packs her dwindling belongings into a van and takes to the road. Adopting a nomadic lifestyle, Fern travels from state to state depending on the seasons (and work opportunities). It isn't an easy path, but Fern soon finds companionship among her fellow nomads, like the welcoming Linda (Linda May, essentially portraying herself) and earnest David (David Strathairn). Fern has lost virtually everything, but she's found a new community in the aftermath.

Related:  Nomadland's Sad Avengers Reference Explained

In terms of a traditional plot,  Nomadland doesn't have much to speak of. Instead, Zhao's script adopts a slice of life format where audiences move with Fern through every day beats; they watch her clean out the van (playfully named Vanguard), take on odd jobs, and walk through the various nomadic settlements she ends up in. More than anything,  Nomadland actually feels like a documentary. That qualifier might make it sound difficult to become engrossed in Fern's journey, but the opposite is true. Viewers are with her every step of the way, and so each moment in her life somehow feels deeply personal. Even something small, like the breaking of some plates, hits hard as though the person watching was Fern herself.

This is both because of Zhao's gentle direction and McDormand's deeply authentic performance. McDormand's talent cannot be denied at this point; she stands as one of the best actresses of her generation, and  Nomadland could very well net her a third Oscar. With just the smallest of gestures, she perfectly conveys everything Fern's feeling, whether it be sadness over leaving her late husband's jacket in a storage locker or joy over realizing she's found her people. She doesn't even have to say anything, because her facial expressions do all the work. In fact, McDormand's performance doesn't even feel like a performance at all, but an extension of McDormand herself. This lends an extra level of authenticity to  Nomadland that only enriches the proceedings.

Though this is McDormand's show, the supporting players who appear throughout Fern's story leave their mark. Strathairn is sweetly cautious when it comes to David's approaches toward Fern, and real life nomads Linda May and Swankie give  Nomadland  a touch of humor and heart. Joshua James Richards' camerawork makes good use of the sprawling landscapes Fern travels through, and Ludovico Einaudi's score swells at the right moments to underscore those landscapes. In lesser hands,  Nomadland 's vignette-like format might feel disjointed, but Zhao weaves it all together in a compelling yarn. There isn't a thread out of place here.

At this point, it could feel like the praise for  Nomadland is being overstated. However, when watching, it's hard to deny that something special is happening onscreen. The quieter, sparser approach might not seem appealing to everyone, but there's something universal about Fern's tale that leaves an impact on viewers. Zhao's direction, coupled with McDormand's impressive work, has led to a necessary movie about finding the joys in the little things, healing after devastating hurts, and, above all else, human connection. Right now, those messages are more vital than ever. And yet,  Nomadland just might stand the test of time.

More: Nomadland Movie Trailer

Nomadland is now streaming on Hulu and playing in theaters. It is 108 minutes long and rated R for some full nudity.

Key Release Dates

"Lacking the Lord as One’s Divine Shepard"

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: Nothing else objectionable.

More Detail:

NOMADLAND stars Frances McDormand as a fiftysomething woman who uproots her life after losing her job at a Nevada sheetrock plant and goes on the road, where she meets other itinerant nomads. NOMADLAND features a noteworthy performance by France McDormand, who brings some gusto and flare to the movie. However, the rest of the movie isn’t as satisfying, and the movie’s positive moral elements and references to the birth of Jesus Christ in one early scene are marred by Romantic and pagan attitudes, explicit bathing nudity in one scene, brief foul language, and two verbal references to suicide.

NOMADLAND is based on a non-fiction book about older people who lost their jobs during the Great Recession created by the housing bubble engineered by Democrat Party policies. In fact, it features some of the same real-life people from the book, which was written by Jessica Bruder.

The movie begins with text on screen informing viewers that a sheetrock plant in Nevada was forced to shut down after 88 years of operation. Cut to Fern, a fiftysomething woman who’s looking at items in her van. Viewers soon learn that Fern was one of the sheetrock workers who lost her job, and now she’s on the road looking for another job.

Fern makes it to an Amazon distribution center, where she works through the holidays. While there, Fern meets Linda May, a sweet woman who’s probably a tad older than her and headed to Arizona. What’s in Arizona? A community of older van-dwellers trying to get a fresh start, despite their age. The community is built on the idea of teaching others how to survive a lifestyle on the road.

Fern heads to Arizona and meets up with Linda May in Fern’s own van she’s named Vanguard. Fern learns the 10 Commandments of stealth parking. She also goes to an RV convention, where she learns how to deal with her own waste while on the road. One day, Fern’s new friend in the community, Charlene Swankie, helps Fern deal with a flat tire which reveals that she only has seven months to live. Charlene and Fern ponder life and death while Fern continues to explore the American wilderness out west.

Fern and Linda May meet up again to work at a wildlife park in the desert. At the park, Fern runs into Dave, a man she knew from her days at the sheetrock plant. Dave invites her to come with him to see his family. Fern doesn’t go immediately but does oblige him after she goes to see her own family. However, it seems that Fern isn’t comfortable sleeping in a bed in Dave’s son’s home. Fern still feels the urge to keep moving, but from what or where to, those are the questions.

NOMADLAND is sort of an INTO THE WILD for the geriatric audience. INTO THE WILD was a drama about a man who left society to live alone in the Alaskan wilderness. The only glaring difference is that the characters in NOMADLAND live on the road due to deviations in their retirement or work plans, not just to thwart expectations of their youth, as the man in INTO THE WILD does. As Fern, Frances McDormand plays a likable character with enough gusto and flare for fun to keep the story entertaining. The movie also features a beautiful melodic score. However, NOMADLAND is shot like a travelogue documentary, so the rest of the movie isn’t as satisfying as her performance.

NOMADLAND has a Romantic worldview mixed with some moral elements. The protagonist Fern has an air of wanderlust about her motivations for being on the road, which viewers come to learn stems from being sedentary with her late husband during his life. The movie captures the beauty of nature and poetry with the same zeal for exploration. That said, several characters care for one another, and it’s clear that family matters. There are also light elements of paganism were characters do what they want when they want to do it. However, this attitude doesn’t come from a desire to be intentionally harmful or selfish, but rather from a season of life where people are trying to take more ownership of their future.

Although the protagonist sings Christmas carols in the beginning, there’s no other Christian content in NOMADLAND. In contrast to this, the Bible is filled with plenty of stories about God’s people roaming in the wilderness. These biblical stories usually, if not always, tell us about God’s deliverance of His people and His sustaining power in times of confusion and wandering. For Christian viewers of NOMADLAND, therefore, MOVIEGUIDE® encourages reading Psalm 23, the Psalm urging us to consider God as our divine shepherd. Of course, Jesus is the ultimate Divine Shepherd who finds lost sheep and leads His sheep in the paths of righteousness.

NOMADLAND also contains explicit bathing nudity in one scene, brief foul language and two verbal references to suicide. So, MOVIEGUIDE® urges extreme caution for this critically acclaimed drama.

Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.

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14 Saddest Movies on Hulu to Watch Right Now

While everyone else is looking to have a great time, perhaps all you want to do is have a cry-fest with these films available on Hulu.

In the age of streaming services, picking a bad movie seems to be difficult. You have so many options of services and catalogs, that sometimes you spend more time choosing than actually watching the film. Sometimes you just prefer something you've seen before because it provides you with the comfort you deserve after a long, long day.

In any case, we're often facing a decision that's already been made, and we don't want to leave anything to chance. We want to see a scary film, or a happy film, or something that will make us laugh or sing. A sad film? Well, everyone's entitled to a night of unlimited tissues and applause while you bawl your eyes out. If that's your thing and Hulu is your pick for a streaming service, here's a good selection of those sad films you can watch today.

14 Self-Reliance (2024)

Self reliance.

Read our review

If any streamer has consistently released solid original films, it's Hulu (odd, considering their apparent focus on television over cinema). The latest excellent addition to their lineup is Jake Johnson's directorial debut, Self Reliance . If this first film is any indication, Johnson is going to be helming some terrific genre-blenders down the line.

We've All Had That One Breakup

Self-Reliance is wildly impressive for a directorial debut . It has an engrossing central concept (a man must live for a full 30 days while being hunted, but he can't be struck down if he's within striking distance of another individual) and never stops focusing on character. It's a movie where the primary goal is to entertain, but the characters are so well-drawn that it's hard not to focus on them over the situation they're experiencing. This is especially true of Johnson's Tommy, who reads as far more heartbreakingly organic than most recently dumped movie characters. He's lost, and the willingness he shows to play the likely deadly game is all the hint one needs.

13 Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Beasts of the southern wild.

*Availability in US

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Beasts of the Southern Wild not only did extremely well at the box office, but it was also a critical darling to boot. The narrative follows a young girl in the Southern Mississippi Delta as she goes on a journey to find her long-lost mother. But, when her father falls ill and passes away, little Hushpuppy finds herself lost in a cruel world that uses people and spits them out.

Wallis's Heartbreaking Performance

A few things are absolutely sterling about Benh Zeitlin's film. First and foremost, the performance from Quvenzhané Wallis is out of this world, and her becoming the youngest Best Actress nominee in Academy Awards history was more than deserved. The question is, why hasn't she continued to experience an upward trajectory? Hollywood needs to get young Ms. Wallis back into mainstream films because she can carry them with ease. After all, she will bring the viewer to tears with her work in Beasts of the Southern Wild , delivering a complexly emotional and layered performance that makes the audience believe she's a real person. A real young person who has lost everyone.

12 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

Portrait of a lady on fire.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire lit up the world when it debuted in 2019, not only being recognized as one of the best movies of 2019 but of the 21st century as a whole. It's a beautifully somber film that takes place in the late 1700s, where an artist and an aristocrat find themselves entering an intense love affair. Though we know from the very beginning how it'll ultimately end, the story of their relationship is made all the more powerful for it.

A Three-Part Gut-Wrenching Ending

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is easily one of the most touching romance stories on Hulu right now, simultaneously working as a compelling tearjerker to boot. Its emotional moments never feel manipulative, as they're carried exclusively by the performances of co-stars Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel. Just be sure to have a box of tissues ready by the time it reaches its stellar ending.

11 On the Count of Three (2021)

Read Our Review

You may recognize Jerrod Carmichael more for his career in comedy than his 2021 directorial debut. However, for as funny as On the Count of Three is, it's just as likely to give you the sniffles in between its jokes. Carmichael stars alongside Christopher Abbott as best friends in a somber situation. They've made a mutual suicide pact. However, before they go through with their plans, the two try to celebrate their last day on Earth while tying up whatever loose ends they may leave behind.

A Tragic Topic Handled Well

Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. In under 90 minutes, Carmichael and Abbott will make you laugh and cry in equal measure, tackling a subject as serious as suicide with a surprising amount of grace. With a sobering ending to cap everything off, On the Count of Three is a fantastic Hulu tearjerker that you can't afford to miss.

35 Saddest Movies That Are Certified Tearjerkers

10 the babadook (2014).

Some of the most effective horror films are also deeply melancholic. This is no better illustrated than with 2014's The Babadook , which was written and directed by Jennifer Kent . The film follows Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman as they portray Amelia and Samuel Vanek respectively. The two live alone in Adelaide, with Samuel's father, Oskar, unfortunately passing away due to a tragic accident. However, their quiet lives are about to be uprooted. The sudden arrival of a monster in the Vanek residence will force this shattered family to confront their pasts and overcome their suppressed turmoil.

A Grief-Ridden Horror Tale

Aside from scaring you out of your skin, The Babadook 's underlying themes of grief and trauma will hit you right where it hurts. Whether you believe the monster tormenting the Vaneks is real or not, you'll find yourself misty-eyed at the horrors this mother and son are forced to endure. The Babadook shows just how effective the horror genre is at conveying stories of depression.

9 Flee (2021)

Flee is an interesting film not only for its presentation but for the true story it depicts. This 2021 animated film is a documentary, sharing the experiences of a man named Amin Nawabi who fled Afghanistan for asylum in Denmark. Animated sequences depicting Amin's past are interlaced with real-life archival footage of Afghanistan, bringing to life a story littered with triumph and tragedy.

The Story of Hard-Earned Freedom

Flee is a powerful film not only for its content but for how it reflects the real struggles faced by those similar to Amin. The combination of beautiful animation and harrowing footage showcases some of the highest peaks and lowest depths that humanity is capable of, rarely embellishing itself in favor of presenting a deeply personal story. Thankfully, the film's optimistic ending will make all the sadness worth pushing through.

8 Sophie's Choice (1982)

Sophie's choice (1983).

Sophie's Choice is a grueling film about an emotionally unstable Polish immigrant who's caught in an unhappy relationship. When her neighbor seems to show the only compassion she has ever known, Sophie starts to relive her tragic past in Auschwitz. But this new addition to her life may not be all that he claims.

The Cost of Survival

The film's themes and content have led to numerous discussions over the years, and given the fact this iconic Meryl Streep film makes her character choose between her children, that's not hard to believe. But most tend to settle on the take that Meryl Streep's character did what she had to do to survive the holocaust, though not without a soul-destroying price. It's incredibly grim territory for a film to go to, but Sophie's Choice is a beautiful tragedy nonetheless.

7 The Cove (2009)

In 2009, a documentary directed by Louie Psihoyos won an Academy Award. It was called The Cove , and it opened a window into a horrific act by humans that takes place regularly in Japan: dolphin hunting. The story is told from the perspective of Ric O'Barry, the main activist who not only fights the hunters today but was formerly the man in charge of training dolphins for the iconic show Flipper.

Reality Can Be Much Worse than Fiction

The documentary is as graphic as it's interesting. How O'Barry plans a whole scheme to reveal the excesses of the fishing industry is cinematic, thrilling, and very scary. It's a really tough watch given the reality of what it portrays, but, at the same time, an important document of a horrifying practice.

6 Nomadland (2021)

Chloé Zhao's Nomadland is a gloomy depiction of a reality the main character Fern appears to have chosen. Why? Because of a tragic event that consumes her memory. However, we in the audience just keep asking, "How can anyone decide to do this?" The answer lies in the inevitable course of the country where the most vulnerable live in extreme conditions such as Fern's. Her relationship with her family is revealed in a sad sequence that makes us understand further why she is where she is.

An Empathetic Portrait of Poverty

Nomadland is a hopeful film. However, its narrative isn't exactly friendly. But the Oscars were friendly to it, considering it left the 93rd Academy Awards with trophies for Best Picture, Best Director, and a Best Actress statue for lead performer Frances McDormand. The reality of poverty is always hard to watch, and when a movie makes you empathize with a character as strongly as Nomadland does, it's impossible not to come away with teary eyes.

20 Netflix Original Movies with the Most Tragic Endings

5 three identical strangers (2018).

Another documentary, Three Identical Strangers , tells a story about identical triplets being separated at birth and then encountering each other by pure chance in their teens. In other words, they experienced a miracle. The film is an outstanding storytelling piece.

Stranger than Fiction

As the viewer discovers the reasons for their separation and the experiment they were part of, you will have trouble holding back tears. Three Identical Strangers is extraordinary, but it is also heartbreaking. Hopefully, documentaries like this go a long way in preventing future unethical experiments. Not only is the central experiment hard to swallow, but so are the after-effects, with these men's lives being irreparably impacted by this trauma.

4 Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Romeo + juliet.

A modern adaptation of the Shakespeare play, Romeo + Juliet places the Montagues and Capulets in the fictional city of Verona Beach, where the two business families are feuding. The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as the titular Romeo and Juliet, who end up falling in love against their family's wishes.

The Most Recognizable Tragedy

The plot and conclusion of Romeo and Juliet are one that is universally known, even without having seen the play or any adaptations, the work would go on to define 'star-crossed lovers.' That said, this doesn't lessen the impact of what viewers know is about to come, and Baz Luhman's update of the story while staying true to the original concept resulted in one of the most popular and iconic romance movies of the 90s .

3 White God (2014)

13-year-old Lili loses her dog, Hagen, on the streets of Budapest after a neighbor complains, and the father is forced to take the dog away. Struggling on the streets, Hagen is eventually captured and forced into dog fights. Meanwhile, Lili desperately searches for her beloved pet and becomes involved in an uprising of abused dogs that take over the city.

A Doggo Uprising

This one comes with obvious trigger warnings, as the film's accurate portrayal of animal abuse is enough to send any loving doggo parent into tears. However, the film resonates with a profound love of the furry friends and their resilience and importance in humans' lives. The movie is also a masterfully executed mash-up of genres, and the film's climax, which sees hundreds of dog actors take to the streets, is surreal and profound. For those also looking for greater depth to their tragedy, the movie brilliantly uses the mistreatment of dogs as an allegory for societal oppression and inequality.

2 We the Animals (2018)

Three brothers, Manny, Joel, and Jonah, try to navigate a volatile upbringing under a passionate yet abusive father and a mother who dreams of escaping to build a better life for the family. As the boys grow up, Jonah begins to distance himself from his brother and escapes into his own imagined world to deal with the problems, while his other two brothers begin to emulate their father.

Growing Up in an Abusive Home

The visually striking nature of We the Animals , which combines various cinematic styles in a dreamlike flow, works perfectly to pull viewers into the tragic existence of young brothers growing up in an abusive home. This is also complimented by the sincere portrayal of the father by Raúl Castillo, who is not a one-dimensional villain but rather a conflicted, passionate man with heavy faults. The family's struggle with poverty, domestic violence, and mental health is where the film hits those sad and tragic notes, especially with how sincere the movie is in capturing the complexities of each.

15 Movies That Accurately Portray Abusive Relationships

1 fire of love (2022).

Narrated by Miranda July, Fire of Love documents the love story of French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, whose shared passion for studying volcanoes led to their death in 1991 from a volcanic eruption in Japan. The film chronicles through footage taken by the duo both their personal and professional lives leading up to the tragic accident that took their lives.

A Masterfully Crafted Documentary

Katia and Maurice Krafft's love for each other is at the forefront of the documentary, painting them as a one-of-a-kind romance tied together by their passion for studying volcanic activity. The striking visuals that place viewers dangerously close to volcanoes only further add to the profundity of the two and their accomplishments as a pair. This all leads up to the tragic accident, which becomes immensely sad after spending time being won over by the odd yet charismatic couple that committed their entire lives to their love of each other and the most extreme side of nature.

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A Ripped Paul Mescal Fights a Warrior Riding a Rhino in CinemaCon's Thrilling First Look at Gladiator 2

Ahead of the Nov. 22 release of director Ridley Scott's 'Gladiator 2,' CinemaCon got a sneak peek of footage

Gladiator 2 , starring Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington , is finally stepping into the arena. 

At Las Vegas’s CinemaCon 2024 on Thursday, April 11, filmmakers behind the Ridley Scott –directed epic unveiled the first look at the sequel to 2000’s Oscar-winning drama about the Roman empire, which starred Russell Crowe .

An unfinished trailer showed glimpses of Mescal, 28, as Lucius Verus, the nephew of the original film’s villain Commodus ( Joaquin Phoenix ), who grows to idolize deceased gladiator Maximus (Crowe).

Wearing Roman warrior garb, Mescal takes on a menagerie of foes in various grand arenas. In front of screaming crowds, Mescal fights angry baboons and a massive rhinoceros, the latter ridden by a towering man in armor. (He appears to best the rhino by blowing the arena's sand around him, causing the blinded animal to crash.)

One jaw-dropping moment in the footage involves an arena full of water, with warriors fighting to the death atop giant boats. When one is shot with an arrow and falls into the water, it becomes clear sharks prowl the aquatic arena, ready to feast.

In addition to Mescal, and Washington, 69, who plays a former slave-turned-arms-dealer, the sequel also features Pedro Pascal , Joseph Quinn , Fred Hechinger and May Calamawy. Quinn plays Caracalla and Hechinger plays Geta, both co-emperors. 

Reprising their roles in Gladiator and glimpsed in the teased footage are Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, mother to Mescal’s Lucius Verus, and Derek Jacobi as Roman Senator Gracchus. 

A video message from Scott and many of the cast members promised an epic time at the theater, with Washington saying, "This is why people go to the movies."

Gladiator 2 is from distributor Paramount Pictures and screenwriter David Scarpa (of Napoleon , the 2023 historical epic also directed by Scott). As part of their CinemaCon presentation, Paramount also offered glimpses at upcoming movies IF , A Quiet Place: Day One , Transformers One and more.

When Mescal's casting was announced in early 2023, Mescal told The Hollywood Reporter he was "proud" to land the leading role — and that he did so after meeting with Scott, 86, personally, instead of auditioning.

"It's an intimidating feat,” admitted the Normal People star. “It's something I’m nervous about but something I feel like I can do."

He added that "there's a physical robustness required” for leading Gladiator 2 . “This guy's got to fight and got to be a beast. And whatever that looks and feels like is right for me, is what it's going to be."

Lionel Hahn/Getty

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In a conversation with Variety , Paramount motion picture co-head Daria Cercek indicated that the reaction Mescal received during the West End revival of A Streetcar Named Desire influenced producers' decision to cast him as Lucius.

Gladiator 2 is in theaters Nov. 22.

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Nicola Peltz Beckham, a billionaire’s daughter, made a movie about abject poverty. It’s as bad as you think

Lola, whose protagonist careens from one traumatic experience to the next, doesn’t explore hardship – it exploits it

If a nepo baby makes a laughably oblique film portraying what she must imagine to be the strife of the impoverished class, but hardly anyone watches it, will it hurt her career?

That’s sort of a trick question. Nicola Peltz Beckham, daughter of the Disney agitator investor and billionaire Nelson Peltz , and daughter-in-law of the power couple David and Victoria Beckham , dwells in a tax stratum so high that her career’s successes and failures are almost irrelevant. Most learned her name when her father filed a lawsuit against two of her former wedding planners over a $159,000 deposit – a relatively small amount in comparison with the reported $3.8m bill for her nuptials to Brooklyn Beckham. She has acted in a handful of television shows and movies since she was 11, but Lola, which premiered on 9 February with a limited theatrical and digital release, marks her writing and directorial debut, and her first leading role. Peltz Beckham described the project, which she’s been working on for six years, as a “slice-of-life film”.

On the whole, Lola is a bad movie.

Peltz Beckham plays Lola James, a 19-year-old who splits her time working at a drugstore with her best friend, Babina, and a strip club, where she’s naive though intrigued by what goes down in the back room. Her tense home life in “middle America” is dominated by her alcoholic mother, Mona (Virginia Madsen), who cruelly ridicules her younger, genderqueer sibling Arlo (the child is referred to with he/him pronouns in the movie), whose affinity for painted nails and makeup is at odds with Mona’s God-fearing Christian values. Lola aspires to send Arlo to art camp in Dallas, which vaguely motivates her to make more money, including servicing creepy customers in the strip club’s back room. After taking refuge at Babina’s house to escape Mona’s wrath, Lola stops back home to pick up the pet bulldog, only to be raped by Mona’s boyfriend, Trick. A few days later, Mona makes Arlo cut his long blond hair, causing him to run away through the streets. He is hit by a car and killed. This perhaps causes Lola to start abusing nose drugs that she buys from Malachi, a pockmarked ex-boyfriend with fluffy hair eager to win her back after cheating on her.

I write “vaguely” and “perhaps” because the plot points hardly feel inciting or interconnected, but rather like trauma bulbs spaced out neatly on a string of lights. Unwilling sex work, scraping by at minimum wage, being abused, losing a sibling violently, abusing drugs – all the bulbs are turned on at once, blinding the moviegoer.

Also, Lola gets pregnant from the rape.

The movie ends with Mona blaming Lola for Arlo’s death, and Lola keeping the baby Trick impregnated her with and raising it with Malachi. In the interim she gets sober through a Narcotics Anonymous group (Peltz Beckham’s brother Will Peltz plays a fellow member, who seemingly flirts with her after a meeting?), confronts her terrible mother, and declares in a concluding narration that this has been a story about generational trauma.

Lola doesn’t even deserve the hate-watch indulgence that Madame Web received . Filled to the brim with underbaked, oftentimes harmful tropes – the supportive Black best friend, a queer child meeting an unceremonious death, the virginal stripper saved by motherhood, a hypocritical Christian drunk – the film leaves one wondering what could have been achieved if any of these characters or their storylines were given as much attention as the gaffers paid to the light hitting Peltz Beckham’s cheekbones.

But, save for a handful of Letterboxd and Google reviews and a WWD interview , very few people have called out Peltz Beckham’s egregious leverage of the aesthetics of poverty, as well as sex work and queer suffering, to serve her creative reputation. The majority of the press surrounding Lola handles the 29-year-old with kid gloves. “You should be so proud of yourself,” an interviewer at the Hollywood Reporter offered . Kelly Clarkson softballed her questions about how fun it must have been to bring her mom and husband on set. Vogue’s coverage of the Lola premiere glossed over the contents of the film and celebrated instead what Peltz Beckham wore (Victoria Beckham’s designs) and how the after-party was decorated (like a strip club).

Peltz Beckham did achieve something with Lola: it’s called “poverty porn”, and in film, that means the exploitation of the conditions of poverty for entertainment and artistic recognition.

Whether a project can be described as “poverty porn” depends on where it falls along the exploration to exploitation spectrum: media that explores poverty doesn’t rely on sensationalism and feels respectful and engaging, while exploitative media might have you wondering if the subjects would sign off on this depiction of themselves.

Ideally, a sincere desire to humanize those living on the margins, to make a character’s appeal transcend the fact that they are poor and all the lazy stereotypes associated with that, helps avoid exploitation. Sean Baker’s vibrant film The Florida Project, about a young mother and daughter living in a motel on the outskirts of Disney World, was mostly successful at that exploration. Then there are films that romanticize notions of class struggle, like the 2021 Oscar winner Nomadland, which contained a scene of an Amazon warehouse lunch break that was so chummy and uncritical of the pitfalls of gig labor that you wonder if Amazon had a financial interest in the movie. (It didn’t, but it did allow the movie to film in its warehouses.) Hillbilly Elegy, the memoir by JD Vance turned Netflix movie, earned itself a more cynical watch after Vance won Ohio’s Senate seat on policies that hurt the population he profited from writing about.

Still, these examples managed to explore nuance in the realities of living without means in this country, whereas Peltz Beckham cosplays a disadvantaged darling, dressed up in despair drag, in a film whose message about hardship could be summed up as “pout your way out of poverty”.

What makes Lola such a flagrant example of poverty porn is just how careless the project feels in the context of Peltz Beckham’s exceptionally lavish life.

That lifestyle was on full display on the Lola red carpet. Peltz Beckham and her co-star and brother Will both shared a photo on Instagram of them posing with their father Nelson and Elon Musk, who attended the premiere. The nearly $200bn net worth pictured, an almost unfathomable amount of money, felt like a mockery of the film’s themes. Further, Musk, who has an estranged trans daughter , joked that he was there “with friends thinking about companies to acquire”, implying the premiere itself served as a great place for the rich to get richer.

It is also worth noting that Nelson has donated to political candidates – Tim Scott , Ted Cruz , Donald Trump – who have supported and authored legislation and campaigned on values endangering trans and gender-nonconforming youth, children who are no different from Lola’s young Arlo. While I’m hesitant to ascribe the sins of anyone’s father to them, Peltz Beckham not only looped her father into promoting the film but is aware of the reputation and company he keeps. In one of the text messages made public in her father’s wedding-planning lawsuit, she demanded , “desantis must be OFF THE GUEST LIST. PLEASE CONFIRM!!” If anyone is looking for a sign of Peltz Beckham’s respect for the characters she’s written, they won’t find it in the photos of her cozying up to Musk and Dad.

While doing press for Lola, Peltz Beckham said she “wanted to write a story from a person’s perspective and another point of view that was not my personal view and not my upbringing. I am an actress and my dream is to get to look at the world from different perspectives.”

That’s fair; telling stories about the impoverished class shouldn’t be off limits to anyone with enough (which is often quite a lot of) money to make a movie. Nepotism isn’t inherently evil nor should billionaire heiresses be barred from creative work (case in point: Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Nevertheless, it is remarkable to witness all that money can buy (a talented cinematographer, Quincy Jones as a music director) put to work within a world dictated by such thin scripting and and careless caricatures.

What all that money can buy includes gratuitous shots of Peltz Beckham as Lola, her mouth slightly agape like a fashion model and makeup done impeccably (exaggerated enough to let us know she’s lower-class, but not so much that it denies her beauty). She stares blankly into the distance at the strip club, or while hugging a toilet after doing drugs at work, or sitting in a back parking lot next to a discarded toy pony. It can’t be overemphasized how often we watch her sitting and staring in this movie; the shots string together the film’s many blinding trauma bulbs. Lola is visually mesmerizing; it also doesn’t add up to much more than a glorified commercial for Peltz Beckham.

A movie like Lola isn’t going to help build a respected career. Though I’m not sure that’s what Peltz Beckham is after. She enjoyed a congratulatory press tour. She looks glamorous in a wife beater. Her finances won’t suffer, and I’m willing to bet she’ll always be in a monetary position to fund her next vanity project. What’s ultimately shameful is that she can wipe off her working-class smokey eye and go about her life, while the people whose perspective she wanted to dip into for a story won’t enjoy any of those luxuries.

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Meet freddy macdonald, the 23-year-old ‘sew torn’ filmmaker who dazzled sxsw.

Macdonald drew inspiration from ‘No Country for Old Men’ for a 2019 ‘Sew Torn’ short, so he was both surprised and terrified when Joel Coen invited him out for coffee to discuss it.

By Brian Davids

Brian Davids

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The phrase, “a change of heart,” would forever alter the course of Freddy Macdonald ’s life. 

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M. emmet walsh, actor in 'blood simple' and 'blade runner,' dies at 88, cormac mccarthy, author of 'no country for old men,' dies at 89.

The father-son duo soon found themselves in the oeuvre of the Coen brothers, specifically No Country for Old Men . The inciting incident of the Coens’ best picturing-winning neo-Western involves Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss stumbling across multiple dead bodies in the desert, as part of a drug deal gone wrong. Of course, his decision to then make off with the now-unattended briefcase full of cash would prove to be fateful.

So the Macdonalds decided to put their own spin on the drug-deal-gone-wrong scenario, opting to tempt a struggling mobile seamstress named Barbara Duggen with a much-needed cash infusion. On the way back from a house call, Barbara drives upon a crime scene where a drug dealer and buyer are both wounded and incapacitated on the side of the road. And recognizing that a briefcase of money is hers for the taking, Barbara uses her sewing skills to rig a mutually lethal trap that would make John “Jigsaw” Kramer beam with pride. With this concept in hand, Macdonald shot the short on an empty road in the Swiss Alps, and the Sew Torn (2019) short was born.

The story is far from over, as the Sew Torn short eventually made its way to one of Macdonald’s sources of inspiration: Joel Coen .

“We blasted [the Sew Torn short] out into the world, and my hero, Joel Coen, actually ended up seeing it. So he wanted to meet for coffee, and I was absolutely terrified, because I thought he was going to want to sue us for stealing that [drug deal gone wrong] setup,” Macdonald tells The Hollywood Reporter . “But he was actually incredibly encouraging and said, ‘You guys should turn this into a feature and do the Blood Simple method. Go to friends, family and your dentists to raise the money independently, and do this thing.’”

So Macdonald and his father did just that, but turning the short into a feature script was by no means a slam dunk. The writing partners wrote 22 drafts of a linear narrative, but they nearly gave up on the proceeding when they struggled to sell that version of the script.

So the Macdonalds structured their newly revamped script around the three different choices Barbara has upon discovering the drug deal gone awry, exploring each outcome in three distinct chapters. At that point, having cracked their script, they eventually landed financing from a number of sources before filming their quirky neo-noir for a month in the Swiss Alps.

Below, during a recent conversation with THR , Macdonald discusses the validation of being accepted into South by Southwest and what’s next for the well-received indie as it pursues distribution.

First of all, are you sure you’re only 23 years old? Have you checked your birth certificate? Because Sew Torn does not look like the work of someone in their early 20s. 

( Laughs .) That is very, very kind, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that. And I am 23, yes. 

Did your parents basically put a camera, Final Draft and Avid in your crib? 

So you really did devote your entire childhood to this pursuit.

Yeah, I love filmmaking, and ever since I was a kid, I was neck deep in it. And it was such a blessing to have my dad by my side. His name is also Fred, so it’s very confusing. He’s Fred and I’m Freddy; I’m the fifth Fred in my family. But whenever I tell people that I work with my dad, they’re often like, “How do you work with your dad? I can’t imagine working with my dad.” But we really have the exact same taste. And so ever since I was a kid, we’ve been co-writing scripts and making them. So that’s what built up to the Sew Torn feature. 

Sew Torn ’s protagonist, Barbara Duggen (Eve Connolly), is like John “Jigsaw” Kramer or MacGyver with a needle and thread. 

( Laughs .) I love that.

What inspired this character and her superpowered sewing ability?

So it’s kind of a crazy story. The feature is based on a short film of the same name, and the short film was my college application film. I made the short in high school, and I was just trying to get into a film school. Every film school has a different prompt, and ultimately, I knew that AFI was my number-one choice. And AFI’s prompt was to tell a story about a change of heart. 

So, long story short, once we made the short, we blasted it out into the world, and my hero, Joel Coen, actually ended up seeing it. So he wanted to meet for coffee, and I was absolutely terrified, because I thought he was going to want to sue us for stealing that [drug deal gone wrong] setup. But he was actually incredibly encouraging and said, “You guys should turn this into a feature and do the Blood Simple method. Go to friends, family and your dentists to raise the money independently, and do this thing.” So that was the journey of creating Barbara as this crazy seamstress superhero. I love how you described her. 

Once you started writing the feature script, how soon did you arrive at the movie’s fork-in-the-road structure that explores each of Barbara’s three different choices (commit the “perfect” crime, call 911 or drive away from the accident scene)?

It was a long screenwriting journey, and it started at AFI. I started developing a version of it there, and my dad and I co-wrote it. The first 22 drafts were a linear narrative that continued the short film’s inciting incident, and after two years of writing, we got the same notes on the most recent 22nd draft that we received on the first draft. So we made a complete circle, and we were like, “What are we going to do?” We put so much time into this and it clearly wasn’t working. 

I don’t really care if the physics truly work or not just because Barbara’s exploits with a needle and thread are so cinematic, but how much bending of reality did you have to do for most of her traps and devices? 

So the film is, of course, very heightened in nature, but despite how outlandish they are, my dad and I were adamant about making sure that these contraptions work, physically. So we spent hours in our backyard with thread and cardboard guns, and we really played with these Rube Goldberg set pieces. And once we’d get one to work, we’d write it down, and then we’d actually shoot each set piece shot for shot. So they were shot kind of how they ended up in the film, and then we distributed [this footage] to our cast and crew. That way, they’d know that these things work and that we’re going to be able to execute them on set. Eve [Connolly], our Barbara, practiced shooting that dart gun around our house during the lead-up to production, so we really wanted to make sure everything worked physically. 

Barbara is a struggling mobile seamstress, and her brick-and-mortar shop is also going under. That’s where her unique talking portraits are displayed rather prominently, and she also lives among them in her living quarters. They’re like ghosts on her ceiling, as recorded audio is tied to each portrait. Is this a real product that exists? 

Once you finished the script, how complicated was the road to actual production?

Being our first feature, it was pretty tricky, so we learned a lot. Fortunately, I had AFI as a great guidance to steer me in the right direction, but we got very lucky in terms of financing. I met two twin producers at a film festival when I was 15, and they loved the Sew Torn short film. So they signed on to help raise the money, and they were just phenomenal in terms of pitching the short film. Even though the short film was a proof of concept, it is a pretty odd concept, but they were able to pitch it around and get a lot of exciting investors involved. We also had our producer, Barry Navidi, who sourced a lot of great people as well. So the financing came together over time. But the biggest struggle, as I mentioned, was the writing and making sure the script was as tight as possible, so that when we went into production, we knew how to shoot these contraptions and how to direct it. 

Had you just shopped the script around, I’m not sure that people would’ve understood what this is on paper. So having both the short and the script must’ve been invaluable.

Did you use the same car as the short?

It’s the exact same car. My mom actually found that car in a Swiss garage, and she asked the owner if we could use it in a movie. And she was like, “Of course!” So it was incredible of her to let us use her car for the short and then for a long feature shoot.

Was that music switch already installed in the car? That proved to be a dynamic source of tension. 

I’m so glad you feel that way, and yes, the switch was already in there. I just loved the absurdity of having that single switch for the music and playing up that tension. 

To me, the movie is partially about not taking shortcuts or chasing instant gratification, and even though you’re well ahead of schedule in your fast-rising career, you clearly put in the work from a very young age. Do you have your own thematic takeaway?

Well, that’s very kind, and I really appreciate that. The theme of the film was something that we dove into a lot, and it was a difficult thing to wrap our heads around. A lot of people ask what the right choice is and what Barbara should have done. And, ultimately, we really just wanted to present the repercussions of each of these choices and contrast that to whether or not Barbara got her emotional need as a character, as opposed to her want of the physical briefcase. So it was a long journey figuring out the theme.

Are you guys going to keep traveling to festivals until you find a deal you’re happy with?

Lastly, you likely touched on it already, but what was this movie’s own fork-in-the-road moment? Was there a decisive moment that could’ve upended the entire enterprise had you made a different decision?

Not to harp on the same point, but it was definitely throwing out the script after the notes we received on the 22nd draft. We pitched around the short and the linear version of the script, and we were at a point where we were literally talking about scrapping the entire feature and moving on to something new. The short-to-feature process is just so difficult because there’s all this baggage associated with the short, and we were very close to not even making the film. So it took a lot of walks and a lot of time with thread until we realized that maybe there is a path forward. And if we decided not to go on that one brainstorm walk where we cracked the code and figured out the concept, then this feature never would’ve happened.

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