SILENT TREATMENT

China Censors News of Chloé Zhao’s Historic Oscars Sweep

The Best Director winner was trolled in China last month when an old interview resurfaced that showed her criticizing her country of birth.

Chloé Zhao made movie history Sunday night by becoming the first woman of color and second woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Director—but the news has been overlooked, and even outright censored, in her birth country of China. According to the Associated Press, the two main state-run new outlets have stayed silent on her boundary-breaking success, and social-media posts marking her wins have been pulled down. Her Nomadland also won Best Picture. Film magazine Watch Movies, which has over 14 million followers on China’s Twitter equivalent, Weibo, had a post marking Zhao’s success removed, while hashtag called “Chloe Zhao wins Best Director” was also censored on the platform. For the first time in five decades, the Oscars ceremony was not broadcast in Hong Kong, which is under increasingly tight control from Beijing. Zhao was the target of nationalistic anger in China last month when an eight-year-old interview resurfaced in which she described the country as “a place were there are lies everywhere.”