Following the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, Fern (Frances McDormand) packs her van and sets off on the road 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.... (Full plot summary below)
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Following the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, Fern (Frances McDormand) packs her van and sets off on the road 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.
Leave your thoughts about Nomadland.
| CineVueZoe MargolisNomadland, with its beautiful simplicity, and wonderful performances, manages to be an elegant, profoundly moving film which shows the real value of living, rather than just surviving. |
| SlateDana StevensFern’s need for constant movement, McDormand implies in a performance of extraordinary depth and ambiguity, is both a search for something and an escape from something else, and not even she seems completely sure what either something is. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperIf you miss this film, you are robbing yourself of one of the great movie-watching experiences of your life. |
| The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldZhao shows us the difficulty of this life — the endless laundromats, the cramped bed in the van, the cold, the possessions left behind — but also its beauty and freedom. I wished I could have seen Nomadland on a theater screen, to see the horizons and pale-peach sunrises stretching endlessly in Joshua James Richards’ beautiful cinematography. And I wished I could have seen McDormand’s face as big as a house, looking wonderingly outward, finding possibility. |
| VarietyPeter DebrugeFor those on Zhao’s wavelength, the movie is a marvel of empathy and introspection. |
| Boston GlobeTy BurrNomadland balances with spine-tingling grace between respect for that restlessness of spirit and longing for a society that has any notion of how to care for it. |
| Washington PostAnn HornadayNomadland is the kind of big and big-hearted movie — featuring a central performance at once epic and fine-tuned — that reminds you of how much life one film can hold, when circumstances allow. |
| The New York TimesA.O. ScottNomadland is patient, compassionate and open, motivated by an impulse to wander and observe rather than to judge or explain. |
| The Associated PressLindsey BahrThis film is a small miracle and a uniquely meditative experience. |
| Time OutPhil de SemlyenThis could all easily come over as hippie-dippie or hectoring, but it’s neither. As with her last film The Rider, a western masterpiece in its own right, Zhao is so expert at stitching together realism, moments of sheer transcendence and a lightly-worn radicalism in a way that feels nothing but unpatronising and empathetic. |
