Chloe Zhao Becomes First Female Asian Director to Win Oscar

Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao has won Best Director for "Nomadland" Sunday night at the Oscars 2021.

She was one of two women nominated in the category - a first for the Academy Awards.

She became the first woman of color and the first woman of Asian descent to earn best director at the Academy Awards.

The Chinese filmmaker said she has "been thinking a lot lately of how I keep going when things got hard."

Growing up in China she and her father would play a game of memorizing classic Chinese poems and texts which they would recite together. One in particular stood out to her which was titled "The Three Character Classics."

Zhao recited the first line in both her native language and English.

"People at birth are inherently good," she said. "And those six letters had such a great impact on me when I was a kid and I still truly believe in them today."

She said she has "always found goodness" in the people she has met in the world and held up her Oscar, saying, "This is for anyone who has the faith and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves and to hold on to the goodness in each other no matter how difficult it is to do that."

Her film centers on a community of people who travel around the US seeking out gig work.