Frances McDormand plays a modern-day nomad in new film

Two-time Oscar-winning actor Frances Mcdormand plays a woman in her sixties named Fern - who loses everything during the Great Recession - in a new film Nomadland.

Directed by Chloe Zhao, Nomadland features the largely overlooked casualties of the 2007-2009 economic collapse: older Americans. 

Based on Jessica Bruder's Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, the film follows Fern who embarks on a journey through the American West and joins a growing community of modern-nomads living in RVs and vans.

Acclaimed director of The Rider and Songs My Brothers Taught Me, Chloe Zhao is the editor, co-producer, screenwriter and director of this project.

She said, “Having grown up in the cities of China and England, I’ve always been deeply drawn to the open road—an idea I find to be quintessentially American—the endless search for what’s beyond the horizon.”

Fargo actor Frances McDormand will be joined onscreen by Oscar nominee David Strathairn and real-life nomads: Bob Wells, Linda May and Swankie.

Distributed by Searchlight Pictures, Nomadland will premiere at both the Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, September 11.