NEW YORK (AP) – Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” cemented her Oscar favorite status Wednesday by receiving the highest honor at the 32nd annual Producers Guild of America (PGA) Awards. .
“Nomadland,” a portrait of itinerant people in the American West during the recession, is only the second film directed by a woman to win the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Best Motion Picture Production. The other was Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” in 2010.
In a long, virtual, delayed awards season that has marched in step with the pandemic with little of the usual pomp, declaring a favorite has been a challenge. But if a film can claim that title, it is “Nomadland,” also a Golden Globe winner for best drama film. Also, Zhao is considered the favorite for the directing award and, if she wins, she will be the second to achieve the feat again after Bigelow.
“Nomadland,” made with less than $ 5 million and lots of amateur actors, is a rare winner of the PGA Award, which has traditionally recognized large-scale productions.
“In a year when we all led such isolated lives and movies felt so vital, we are proud to have produced a film about community and what connects us,” said producer Peter Spears accepting the honor in a recorded message. .
The PGA Awards are closely watched as an Oscar barometer. Producers use the same preferential ballot as the film academy, and their nominees for best picture are usually the same. This year, the producers submitted few films that the academy did not include on its list – “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” “One Night in Miami …”, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (“The mother of the blues”) – and they skipped one that was nominated for an Oscar: “The Father” (“The father”).
In the 11 years since the Oscars expanded the best picture category to more than five nominees, both groups have selected the same winner eight times. They differed last year, when the guild chose “1917” and the academy to “Parasite” (“Parasites”); in 2017, when “La La Land” triumphed at the PGA and “Moonlight” at the Oscars; and in 2016, when “The Big Short” received the producers’ award and “Spotlight” the academy award.
Other winners were “Soul” by Pixar, for best animated film, and “My Octopus Teacher” (“My teacher the octopus”) for best documentary.
Wednesday’s awards were streamed virtual and prerecorded to an all-invited audience. Opening the ceremony, “Black-ish” actress Tracee Ellis Ross said of the show that “this in itself is a production experiment.”
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Follow Jake Coyle on Twitter as http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP.
