Directors

Chloé Zhao

Zhao was born and raised in Beijing, to a steel-company manager father and a hospital-worker mother. Growing up, she was very rebellious, and drawn to influences from Western pop culture. She attended a boarding school in London before moving to Los Angeles to finish high school. Zhao studied at Mount Holyoke College earning a bachelor's degree in political science. She worked odd jobs as a party promoter, in real estate, and bartending before studying film production at New York University Tisch School of the Arts.


In 2010, Zhao's short film Daughters premiered at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and won Best Student Live Action Short at the 2010 Palm Springs International ShortFest and and Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Cinequest Film Festival. In 2015, Zhao made her feature film debut with Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), produced by Forest Whitaker. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival as part of the U.S. Official Competition. It later played at Cannes Film Festival as part of the Director's Fortnight selection. The film was nominated for Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. In 2017, her second feature film The Rider (2017) premiered at Cannes Film Festival as part of the Directors' Fortnight selection and won the Art Cinema Award. The film earned her a nomination for Best Feature and Best Director at the Independent Spirit Awards. At the same ceremony, Zhao became the inaugural winner of the Bonnie Award, named after Bonnie Tiburzi, which "recognizes a mid-career female director with a $50,000 unrestricted grant sponsored by American Airlines".


In April 2018, it was announced that Amazon Studios will back Zhao's upcoming untitled Bass Reeves biopic, a historical Western about the first black U.S. Deputy Marshal. Zhao is set to direct the film and write the screenplay.