Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” was discreetly wiped off the Chinese web on Friday, days after the nationalist reaction erupted online over questions about her citizenship and a sentence she uttered to an American magazine nearly a decade ago.
The sudden online cleanup signals that the theatrical presentation of the drama starring Frances McDormand is in jeopardy – although earlier this week, official state media honored Zhao’s Golden Globe best director award on Sunday as a reason for pride for China. The film was approved for limited theatrical release on April 23 by the country’s National Arthouse Alliance of Cinemas (NAAC) in February.
“In the future, Hollywood will no longer dare to allow the Chinese to make films or set foot on Chinese topics – you will never be able to guess where minefields are,” lamented a disillusioned commentator on the popular user review site Douban.
Zhao is the director of Marvel’s next superhero movie, “Eternals”, for which China will be a key overseas market. With a top-notch cast, including Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek and Kumail Nanjiani, the US release is scheduled for November 5.
While many in China applauded Zhao as an inspiration to become the first Asian woman to win the Golden Globe for direction, thousands of others have turned to online blogging platforms since Monday, demanding to know their nationality, outraged by the idea that they should celebrate their achievement if it’s not Chinese.
Their fire was further fueled by an interview that Zhao, who was born in Beijing, gave Filmmaker Magazine in 2013. In it, she explained that she was attracted to her first subjects about the heart of the United States because of her upbringing in China, and “being in a place where lies are everywhere. ”The magazine deleted the section in mid-February, days before the announcement of the launch date for“ Nomadland ”China. The publication did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
A Weibo search for the hashtag “#Nomadland” indicates that the topic violates China’s “laws, regulations and policies”.
Weibo
On Friday, a wave of censorship of content related to “Nomadland” gradually took place on China’s various film and critic platforms.
First, the promotional posters for the film disappeared from Douban in the early hours of the morning. Soon, the listed release date suddenly disappeared.
Next, “auto-media” blog accounts found that the censors had deleted previous articles related to “Nomadland”. A particularly well-regarded Wechat account posted a screenshot with two messages it received from censors, stating that its content, “after examination by the platform”, had contravened the “Development and management rules for public information services on Instant Messaging Platforms. ”And therefore were excluded.
The articles in question were entitled “This person in the film industry probably knows Chloe Zhao better than anyone else in the world” and the seemingly harmless “‘Nomadland’ is released on April 23 in China; Chloe Zhao becomes the first Asian to win the Golden Globe for Best Director. “
While censors allowed the text of a NAAC promotional “Nomadland” post to stay, the official poster for the film was removed.
Weibo
At the end of the day, some important research topics related to the film were blocked on the Chinese platform Weibo, similar to Twitter. Searches for the hashtags “#Nomadland” and “#Nomadland Release Date” currently generate the message that “The topic page cannot be displayed due to related laws, regulations and policies”.
The selection of censors seems uneven, however – hashtags like “#Nomadland Movie”, “#Chloe Zhao” and “Chloe Zhao wins the Golden Globe for Best Director” are still available, the last of which has seen about 350 million of times.
Currently, the image of the official poster of the film has also been deleted from Weibo. This caused some embarrassment, such as a promotional NAAC post celebrating the victory of Zhao’s Golden Globe, whose uncensored text ended up floating above a large image that appeared only as a blank gray rectangle. The post appears to have finally been deleted around midnight local time.
A more worrying sign for the film’s prospects in China came when China’s top online tickets, Maoyan and Tao Piaopiao, moved to remove the April 23 release date from their lists. NAAC had not yet responded to Variety’s request for clarification at the time of publication. Sources indicate, however, that they still hope to proceed with the launch under the radar, remaining discreet with the promotion.
In Douban, a platform that leans more liberally and is more popular with urban youth, users who discuss censorship lament that Zhao’s art has been so politicized. “They talked about her birthplace, her family, her nationality and the things she said. The only thing they didn’t discuss is the movie, ”wrote one.
Another wrote with resignation: “The future trend will be just to close the door and have fun [in our own market], I think – in any case, the box office mythically continues to push each film higher than the next.
On Weibo, a user posted a black and white image of Zhao with a censorship bar in his eyes, along with the comment: “In China they don’t consider her Chinese, and in the US they don’t consider her American. She is really in ‘Nomadland. “