All three films are quiet and contemplative, placing the audience in the often quiet characters’ heads through the way they interact with the exquisite landscapes around them. “Nomadland” had Oscar winner Frances McDormand in the lead as a widow who travels through the country working seasonal jobs as a nomad, but also featured of real-life modern nomads in its supporting cast. Her first two films both starred non-professional actors, many from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux region. Across her first three movies - “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” “The Rider,” and “Nomadland,” which made her the second woman in history to win Best Director at the Oscars - she established herself as a chronicler of the American West, making movies about ordinary people in society’s margins navigating their ordinary troubles.

The priority Zhao gives to world-building in film is well reflected in her own work as a director. Some are massive epics like “Lord of the Rings” or “Interstellar,” while others are intimate romantic dramas like “Happy Together” or “Wuthering Heights.” Zhao’s films are often compared to the works of Terrence Malick, and she’s unsurprisingly a big fan of the director’s absorbing and gorgeous works, especially his 2005 historical epic “The New World.” But Zhao’s no snob about the other movies and TV shows she considers her favorites: “Man of Steel” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” are among the titles she’s quick to praise. The films that use their locations successfully, in Zhao’s eyes, can vary widely.

One of her favorite ways to praise a director is by focusing how they approach using their locations: how the tiny details that populate a setting are considered, and how the characters’ interactions with their surroundings establish and reflect their own internal universes. The Oscar-winning director describes her favorite movies by focusing on their scope and the worlds they create. When you listen to Chloé Zhao talk about the films that she loves, an obvious pattern emerges.

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