The Basics on Chloé Zhao, the First Asian Woman to Earn a Golden Globe Nom For Directing

At first, Zhao told Filmmaker magazine, she leaned towards politics and history as a way of detangling her own complicated upbringing. "It goes back to when I was a teenager in China, being in a place where there are lies everywhere," she said. "You felt like you were never going to be able to get out. A lot of info I received when I was younger was not true, and I became very rebellious toward my family and my background. I went to England suddenly and relearned my history. Studying political science in a liberal arts college was a way for me to figure out what is real. Arm yourself with information, and then challenge that too."

When she began working a bartender, though, all that changed. She became "turned off by politics" and realised, instead, she liked "meeting people and learning about their histories." From there, she enrolled in the graduate film program at New York University's famed Tisch School of the Arts, and the rest is history!

Back in 2018, Zhao mused to Vogue about the kind of storyteller she wanted to be, and landed on one major thing: hope. "At a time like this, there's a need to see that there's good in America. We're always being told that we have to win all the time. But that's not real life," she said. "Our film's message isn't the typical Hollywood ending. [The protagonist] has lost something, but he doesn't give up. He never would."

She added, "I would never want to make a film without hope."

Zhao is the director of the upcoming Marvel movie Eternals, focussed on a group of immortal aliens who reunite to protect humanity from their evil foes. She'll be the third female director (and first woman of colour) to helm a Marvel feature, following Captain Marvel's Anna Boden and Black Widow's Cate Shortland.