---
title: "Nomadland"
year: 2021
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/nomadland"
fi1m_score: 83
critics_score: 87
critics_reviews: 27
published: "2026-09-20T07:56:24.462914+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-20T07:56:25.107385+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Nomadland (2021)

Directed by Chloé Zhao · 1h 48m · MPA R · Drama

**Fi1m score: 83** · Critics 87 from 27 reviews

*In a sentence:* Retirement, American style: a van, a bucket, a warehouse job and a sunset every night

> Chloé Zhao puts Frances McDormand among real van-dwellers in the American West and mostly lets them talk, and the result is patient, plain and often moving. It is gentler on the warehouse than the people in it deserve.

## Synopsis

Empire, Nevada, 2011. The gypsum plant closes, the company town closes with it and its zip code is retired. Fern (Frances McDormand), recently widowed, packs what she can into a white van, puts the rest in a storage unit and drives off to work the Christmas rush at an Amazon warehouse. When the season ends she has nowhere to go. A co-worker, Linda (Linda May), tells her about a gathering of van-dwellers in the Arizona desert, where older people who cannot afford rent teach one another how to live on the road: which bucket to buy, how to change a tyre, where to park without being moved on. There Fern meets Swankie (Swankie), who has no time for beginners, and Dave (David Strathairn), who keeps turning up. Fern wants work, a van that runs, and to be left alone.

## Review

The film opens with a card. Empire, Nevada, had a gypsum plant; in 2011 the plant closed, the company town emptied and the zip code was discontinued. Fern (Frances McDormand) lived there with her husband, and now he is dead and the town is gone. Chloé Zhao, who wrote, directed and edited, and produced with McDormand and Dan Janvey, adapts Jessica Bruder’s book about older Americans working seasonal jobs from their vans, and she puts one professional actor in among the people the book is about. We recommend it, and warmly, with one reservation that grew on the drive home.

The people are the point. Linda May and Swankie play women called Linda and Swankie, and they are not acting so much as being filmed, which Zhao has done before with the South Dakota cowboys of *The Rider*. Linda May, at a campfire, tells how she worked all her life, checked what she would have to retire on, and looked at the gas on the stove for a while before her dog looked back at her. Swankie sits on a rock and describes kayaking a river as hundreds of swallows lifted off a cliff and their eggshells drifted on the water beneath her. We did not expect to cry at a description of birds told by a woman we had never heard of, and we did, because Zhao holds on her face and does not cut to the river. She lets us imagine it, and imagining it is the whole of the scene.

McDormand’s job is to listen, and she is good at it. Fern is not a saint. She is short with people, she walks off when conversations get warm, and she plainly prefers the van to any spare room offered to her. McDormand plays her small: a lot of the performance is the back of a head in a driving seat, or a woman squatting in the scrub with a bucket, and the film treats the bucket with the same seriousness as the sunsets.

Joshua James Richards shoots almost everything at the edges of the day: low sun on rock, blue light through a windscreen, a small figure walking away from the camera across a flat. He is also credited with production design, and the van, with its shelf of patterned plates and its curtain and its single burner, is the most lived-in set we have seen in some time. Hannah Peterson keeps Fern in the same padded jacket and knitted hat for months of story, which is right; nobody here has a wardrobe. Zhao cuts her own footage and likes to leave a scene a beat early, on a look rather than a reply. Ludovico Einaudi’s piano comes in over the driving and, once or twice, over a face that was doing fine without it.

Now the reservation. Fern’s first job is the Christmas rush at an Amazon warehouse, and Richards shoots it clean and bright and orderly, yellow vests moving among tall shelves. Fern seems to like it. The book has things to say about who profits when a woman of retirement age sleeps in a car park to sort parcels, and the film declines to say them. It is not that Zhao should have made a lecture. It is that she has made a film about people who lost everything and been vague about why. One or two critics raised this; most did not. We think it costs the film more than they allow.

David Strathairn’s Dave is the other soft spot. Strathairn is as unshowy as ever, and Dave is a decent man, but his is the one strand you can feel was written: his scenes have beginnings and endings where everyone else’s just stop. Against *The Rider*, which had no star and hurt more, this is a smoother piece of work. It is also more generous, and it gets away with a good deal on the strength of two women talking by a fire.

It runs 108 minutes and carries a 12 certificate, and it will not frighten anyone. Watch it on the biggest screen you have and turn the lights off, because Richards’s dusk is half the film. Then look up what Bruder wrote about the warehouse. The film would rather you did not, and that is our only real complaint.

*Fi1m score 83, published 20 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews are close to unanimous. Most critics take Nomadland as a quiet road film about people pushed out of their homes by economic collapse, and praise it for treating them with dignity rather than pity. The praise settles on two things: Frances McDormand’s understated lead performance, which several critics rank among her best, and Chloé Zhao’s decision to put real van-dwellers on screen beside her, which most find gives the film an authenticity a script alone could not. The photography of the American West is mentioned in nearly every review.

The reservations are few and gather around politics. Sight and Sound and The Skinny both feel the film prefers small moments to any argument about labour and exploitation, and the Evening Standard thinks it romanticises a workforce ripe for exploiting. Deadline finds it cooler and more detached than most. The one outright dissent comes from Eye for Film, which finds McDormand miscast and the direction contrived. Otherwise the spread is narrow.

### Reviews we read (27)

- **The Telegraph**, Robbie Collin (5/5): Chloé Zhao’s hauntingly beautiful Oscar winner follows a widow joining America’s drifters after economic hardship. The critic highlights Frances McDormand’s subtle, egoless performance as one of the finest of her career and the film’s authentic use of real van-dwellers. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/nomadland-review-frances-mcdormand-goes-run-american-carnage/)
- **Time Out**, Phil de Semlyen (5/5): Zhao transforms a story of economic catastrophe into a poignant, deeply felt road movie with raw emotional honesty and an almost spiritual connection to the landscape. McDormand is magnetic as a quietly fierce avatar for economic anxiety, and the film expertly stitches realism, transcendence and lightly-worn radicalism. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/nomadland-2021)
- **Empire**, Ian Freer (90/100, inferred): The film is a miracle, a state-of-the-nation address about a forgotten underclass and a portrait of quiet resilience. Zhao elevates her art with a beautifully made, clear-eyed view of home, loss and the visibility of women, delivered with a huge emotional wallop. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/nomadland/)
- **IndieWire**, Eric Kohn (A-): The critic praises the magical combo of Frances McDormand and Chloé Zhao in a lyrical road movie that delivers a profound rumination on leaving society behind. Singles out the director's ability to work magic with McDormand’s face and the real world around it. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/2020/09/nomadland-review-1234585838/)
- **Little White Lies**, Hannah Strong (90/100, inferred): Zhao chronicles a year in the life of one woman forced onto the road after her town closes, delivering an achingly tender look at resilience and community among modern nomads. McDormand gives an understated performance of utmost tenderness and care amid stunning images of the American wilderness. [Read](https://lwlies.com/festivals/nomadland-first-look-review)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Justin Chang (90/100, inferred): Chang lauds McDormand's finest performance and Zhao's lyrical, graceful ode to wanderlust and resilience amid economic ruin, highlighting the spiritual grace and real nomads' stories. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2020-12-02/nomadland-review-frances-mcdormand)
- **Screen Daily** (90/100, inferred): Chloé Zhao’s poetic migrant worker drama holds a mirror to society with clarity of thought on home, the environment, women, the elderly and human kindness. McDormand leads with formidable acuity in a significant departure for the director that remains rooted in her appreciation for the American West. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/nomadland-venice-review/5152798.article)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (90/100, inferred): Zhao’s Oscar-winning film is a gentle tone poem that eschews dramatic conflict for quiet humanity and community among America’s new nomads. The critic praises the authentic mix of professional and non-professional performers and the film’s empathetic portrait of resilience and kindness. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/may/02/nomadland-review-chloe-zhao-frances-mcdormand)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney (90/100, inferred): The critic describes it as a powerful character study of a different kind of freedom fighter. Singles out the lived-in authenticity of the story and McDormand's remarkable performance of melancholy gravitas. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/nomadland-film-review-venice-2020-4058601/)
- **The i Paper**, James Mottram (90/100, inferred): McDormand is terrific in this quietly powerful story about a woman overcoming loss of her husband, job and community. Zhao focuses on the little beats of life, her characters dwarfed by the vastness of the American landscape, and the film is about living and moving forward even in the face of economic despair. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/nomadland-review-frances-mcdormand-powerful-story-love-loss-643748)
- **Vulture** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a devastating film about the delicacies of being 'houseless' that could be the feature of the year. Singles out the melancholy grandeur of the American West told through the nomads' stories of hard-won independence. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/nomadland-movie-review-frances-mcdormand-finds-america.html)
- **The New Yorker**, Anthony Lane (85/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's portrayal of economic hardship and Fern's resilient independence, singling out McDormand's grounded performance and Zhao's blend of documentary and fiction for its fierce sadness and beauty. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/07/economic-ruthlessness-on-the-open-road-in-nomadland)
- **Variety**, Peter Debruge (Critics Pick): Debruge celebrates the tender, romantic portrayal of nomadic life and independence, praising McDormand's rich role and Zhao's empathetic, scenic direction blending fact and fiction. [Read](https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/nomadland-review-frances-mcdormand-chloe-zhao-1234766395/)
- **Sight and Sound** (75/100, inferred): The film captures the allure of backcountry wandering and the struggles of drifters without artifice or poverty porn, with McDormand delivering a grounded performance amid majestic landscapes. It is an undeniably rousing experiment whose insights into 21st-century labour and exploitation lack force and clarity. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/nomadland-2020-chloe-zhao-frances-mcdormand-american-drifters)
- **Evening Standard**, Charlotte O'Sullivan (70/100, inferred): This extraordinary film gives a voice to the marginalised and solves the riddle of how to keep going in the face of death. Zhao’s follow-up romanticises the lot of a workforce ripe for exploitation in places but the end justifies the means as it makes clear that capitalism is unfit for purpose. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/nomadland-review-chloe-zhao-oscars-best-film-best-director-a4572105.html)
- **/Film**, Chris Evangelista (10/10): Nomadland is an achingly beautiful drama where Frances McDormand is sublime. It gives her another opportunity to show unparalleled performance in a gritty and gorgeous film that is good for your soul. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/576543/nomadland-review/)
- **HeyUGuys**, Jo-Ann Titmarsh (5/5): Zhao's film is a beautifully told tale of courage and compassion, with Frances McDormand giving a career-best performance as Fern. It shines a light on the hidden lives of transient middle-aged workers in the US and confers dignity to this resilient community. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/nomadland-review/)
- **NME**, Greg Wetherall (5/5): Calls the film a moving road movie like a Bruce Springsteen song, full of semi-socialist rhetoric and contemplation on the American soul. Singles out McDormand's career-best, strong-willed performance as the optimistic Fern. [Read](https://www.nme.com/reviews/film-reviews/nomadland-review-2917986)
- **Collider**, Matt Goldberg (A): The critic calls Zhao a magician for capturing humanity with empathy and without sentimentality; singles out McDormand’s quietly empathetic lead performance as central to the film’s ode to resilience and life beyond the American Dream. [Read](https://collider.com/nomadland-review-frances-mcdormand-chloe-zhao/)
- **Consequence** (Editor's Pick): Zhao’s latest is a gorgeous, lyrical film that serves as a testament to the beauty of the American Midwest and the value of living an unorthodox life; singles out McDormand’s authentic, head-strong lead performance. [Read](https://consequence.net/2021/02/film-review-nomadland-2/)
- **Den of Geek**, David Crow (4.5/5): Praises Chloé Zhao for seamlessly weaving conflicting emotions into a magnificent ode to American nomads left behind by economic forces. Singles out the beauty of the landscapes and McDormand's searing performance matched by real-life nomads. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/nomadland-review-frances-mcdormand/)
- **Polygon**, Karen Han (90/100, inferred): Zhao’s stunning movie makes the journey matter most; singles out the film’s attentiveness and empathy, especially in small moments that distinguish it as one of 2020’s best. [Read](https://www.polygon.com/movies/22291289/nomadland-review-frances-mcdormand-chloe-zhao/)
- **The Playlist**, Jessica Kiang (90/100, inferred): Nomadland is a quiet, enormous, deep breath of a movie that is wise and beautiful, summoned up entirely from things authentically seen, felt, and thought. It carries in its nomad heart all it needs, with superlative photography and real-life nomads. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/nomadland-venice-review-20200911/)
- **The Wrap**, Steve Pond (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a gentle, uncommonly rich drama in which the main character hits the road not to get away from home, but to find it. It singles out the grounded, non-vain performances that blend seamlessly with non-actors in the textures of nomadic existence. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/nomadland-film-review-france-mcdormand-chloe-zhao/)
- **The Skinny**, Rory Doherty (4/5): Describes a visually gorgeous and deeply moving naturalistic portrayal of humanity under tragic circumstances. Praises Zhao's direction of non-professional actors and McDormand's alive performance, while noting a focus on small moments over larger political points. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/new-releases/nomadland)
- **Deadline**, Todd McCarthy (70/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a cool, contemplative look at contemporary American outcasts whose foothold in society grows more precarious. It singles out the rewarding illumination of older working people left behind in backwaters with no prospects. [Read](https://deadline.com/2020/09/nomadland-review-chloe-zhao-frances-mcdormand-1234575485/)
- **Eye for Film**, Anne-Katrin Titze (30/100, inferred): The casting of McDormand as the lead falls flat and makes it difficult to suspend disbelief in this story of a woman living in a van. The direction is a cul-de-sac of its own making, with contrived scenes and a loss of focus. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/nomadland-2020-film-review-by-anne-katrin-titze)

## Details

- **Director:** Chloé Zhao
- **Director:** Chloé Zhao
- **Writer:** Chloé Zhao
- **Cinematography:** Joshua James Richards
- **Editor:** Chloé Zhao
- **Music:** Ludovico Einaudi
- **Production design:** Joshua James Richards
- **Costume design:** Hannah Peterson
- **Producer:** Chloé Zhao, Frances McDormand, Dan Janvey
- **Cast:** Frances McDormand as Fern; David Strathairn as Dave; Linda May as Linda; Swankie as Swankie; Gay DeForest as Gay; Patricia Grier as Patty; Angela Reyes as Angela; Carl R. Hughes as Carl
- **Runtime:** 1h 48m
- **Certificate (MPA):** R
- **Release (the US):** 19 February 2021
- **Genres:** Drama
- **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Winner, 2021); [BAFTA Best Film winners](https://film.one/collections/bafta-best-film.md) (Winner, 2020); [Golden Globe Best Drama winners](https://film.one/collections/golden-globe-drama.md) (Winner, 2020); [Golden Lion winners](https://film.one/collections/golden-lion.md) (Winner, 2020)
- **Budget:** $5 million
- **Box office:** $39 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ4o4jwSaHk

## Where to watch in the US

- Netflix: streaming, leaving 2026-10-01
- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, uhd
- Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd
- Apple TV: buy $4.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $4.99, uhd

*Checked 2026-09-20.*

Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, IE, IL, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TR, UA, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 2021: Best Actress (won); Best Director (won); Best Picture (won)
- Medal from the Circle of Cinematographic Writers for the best foreign film 2021: Medal from the Circle of Cinematographic Writers for the best foreign film (nominated)
- Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Film 2020: Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Film (won)
- Dorian Award for Film of the Year 2020: Dorian Award for Film of the Year (won)
- Venice Film Festival 2020: Golden Lion (won)

## If you liked this

- *The Rider* (2017): Zhao’s previous film, with real South Dakota cowboys and no star; rougher and it hurts more
- *Vagabond* (1985), Fi1m 90: Agnès Varda follows a young woman drifting through winter France; colder, harder, no campfires — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/vagabond.md)
- *Wendy and Lucy* (2008): Michelle Williams, a dog and a broken-down car in Oregon; poverty measured in small change
- *Paris, Texas* (1984), Fi1m 88: Wim Wenders walks a silent man out of the desert; the West shot as a lost country — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/paris-texas.md)
- *The Straight Story* (1999), Fi1m 88: David Lynch’s gentlest film: an old man crosses Iowa on a lawnmower to see his brother — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-straight-story.md)

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/nomadland