“Nomadland” is one step closing to capping off its historic awards season with an Oscar for Best Picture. The Frances McDormand-starrer took home the Best Picture Award at the PGA’s virtual ceremony. With some notable exceptions, the honor has been seen as a predictor of which film will land the Academy Award for Best Picture. “In the 31 years since the PGA Awards began, it has predicted the Oscars Best Picture winner no less than 21 times,” Deadline details.
Written and directed by Chloé Zhao, “Nomadland” is set in the aftermath of the Great Recession and sees a 60-something woman from a former mining town moving into her camper van and traveling across the U.S., picking up jobs along the way.
The drama is based on Jessica Bruder’s 2017 non-fiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.”
Zhao is the most awarded filmmaker in a single awards season thanks to her work on “Nomadland.” She won the Golden Globe this year for Best Director. She and “Promising Young Woman’s” Emerald Fennell are both up for Best Director at the upcoming Oscars, marking the first time in history that two women have been nominated alongside one another for the award. The writer, director, and producer’s other credits include “The Rider” and “Songs My Brothers Taught Me.”