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Oscar frontrunner Chloé Zhao makes history as first Asian woman to win DGA Awards' top prize
Apr 11, 2021 1 min, 21 secs

Nomadland director Chloé Zhao just earned a landmark prize for women and people of color on the Oscars circuit.

The Beijing-born filmmaker became the first woman of color to win the Directors Guild of America's highest competitive prize on Saturday night, beating out Hollywood mainstays like David Fincher (Mank) and Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7) as well as new filmmaking forces Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) and Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) with a key victory for Outstanding Directing — Feature Film in the run-up to the April 25 Academy Awards.

Zhao's win makes her only the second woman in history to claim a win among the 18,000-strong guild's top category, taking the honor 11 years after Kathryn Bigelow broke the Hollywood collective's glass ceiling at the top of 2010 for her work on 2009's The Hurt Locker.

Zhao and Fennell broke barriers among the 2021 DGA nominees earlier this year when they became the first pair of women to be nominated by the guild in the same year.

Zhao seems poised to make Oscars history as well, as Nomadland — about a woman (Frances McDormand) drifting through the American West in the wake of economic strife ‚ has steamrolled the race since its debut last summer, taking both fan-voted prizes (like the Toronto International Film Festival's People's Choice Award), prestige festival honors (it won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival), and industry-adjacent accolades (Nomadland is the first drama film directed by a woman to win the Golden Globe for Best Picture) in recent months.

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