Nomadland: Frances McDormand stars in this adored Oscar contender

When Chloé Zhao’s third film Nomadland premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival, five-star reviews appeared immediately. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw labelled the film ‘a portrait of the times, brought off with exceptional intelligence and style’ and The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin similarly called it ‘deeply intimate and desolately beautiful’.

Nomadland was predicted to win the coveted Golden Lion at Venice, and did so. It has recently been nominated for four Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture and Best Actress. As such, it’s a strong contender for this year’s Oscars.

In the UK the film was due to be released in cinemas on 1 January, but it was postponed because of Covid. The date moved to February, then March, and is now settling for an anxious April. Even though Nomadland isn’t a high-concept blockbuster, the overall experience, which involves driving a van across a rural and picturesque America, sounds suited to the big screen.

Photo: 20th Century Studios/image.net

What's the Nomadland plot?

Inspired by Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, the film follows Fern, a ‘houseless’ widower who drives across southwest America in search for work. She once lived in Empire, Nevada, a real-life company town that dissolved after its mine shut down in 2011. It became a ghost town.

Nomadland is set in 2011, and follows Fern as she travels to find any job going. Along the way, she meets nomads in similar circumstances.

Photo: 20th Century Studios/image.net

Who's in the Nomadland cast?

The always-absorbing Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) plays Fern. Curiously, this protagonist isn’t in the original book: being a gradual creation from both Zhao and McDormand. McDormand went into full method-acting mode for the role, even taking a job at an Amazon warehouse and living in a van.

True to Zhao’s filmmaking style, blurring fiction and documentary into each other, real-life nomads play the people Fern meets on the road. Although this method can enunciate the artifice of the story in some films, Zhao used it to beautiful effect in her previous project The Rider. Hopefully, she'll achieve the same here.

Photo: 20th Century Studios/image.net

What's the Nomadland release date?

Nomadland will be in cinemas (Covid permitting) from Friday 9 April. Watch the trailer below.