All who wander are lost? "Nomadland" (film)

Nomadland (official trailer)

(Searchlight Pictures, 12/14/20) Following the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, Fern (played by Frances McDormand) packs her van and sets off on the road like a Dharma Bum exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad. The third feature film from director Chloé Zhao, Nomadland features real nomads Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells as Fern’s mentors and comrades in her exploration through the vast landscape of the American West.

• FilmWeek interview: "Nomadland" (scpr.org)

Nomadland Q&A

(BFI London Film Festival, 10/16/20) BFI London Film Festival Director Tricia Tuttle interviews  female actor Frances McDormand and Nomadland Director Chloé Zhao about their new film. This interview was screened ahead of the cinema screenings of the film.

Nomadland (Jessica Bruder)

SYNOPSIS: Reeling from the early death of her beloved husband and the loss of their home in Empire, Nevada Fern (McDormand) lives in a kitted-out van, travelling from town to town and picking up short-term seasonal work where she can get it. It’s a premise built on the experiences of America’s modern-day nomads, documented in the source for the film, Jessica Bruder’s eponymous book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.

But there is also much of Zhao’s process present in the film adaptation of the book. As with her previous works, this film is populated with intimate and compassionate studies of real people playing versions of themselves, such as Fern’s compatriots on the road, Linda, Swankie, and Bob, as well as a precious community that has grown out of the ruins of the country’s brutal service economy.

Alongside them, McDormand delivers a quietly breathtaking performance – an angular, sympathetic portrait of an older woman choosing a life of relative freedom, whatever the pains and challenges that entails. And Zhao’s regular collaborator, Cinematographer Joshua James Richards, exquisitely captures the expansive open landscapes of the Western United States.

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