On track for Oscars success? 'Nomadland' wins at Producers Guild Awards

The best picture winner at the PGAs often mirrors the winner of the Academy Award

Frances McDormand, left, and Swankie appear in a scene from 'Nomadland.'  AP

Chloe Zhao's Nomadland cemented its Oscar front-runner status on Wednesday, winning the top award at the 32nd annual Producers Guild of America Awards.

Nomadland, Zhao's recession-era portrait of itinerant people in the American West, is only the second film directed by a woman to win the Darryl F Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures. The other was Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker in 2010.

In a delayed, virtual and very long awards season that has marched along during the pandemic with little of the usual pomp, declaring a clear front-runner has been challenging. But if any film could claim that mantle, it's Nomadland, winner of the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama. Zhao, too, is considered the favourite for Best Director at the Oscars. If she does win, she would only the second female director to do so, again after Bigelow.

Nomadland, made for less than $5 million and with many non-professional actors, is an unusually low-budget winner for the PGA honour, which has traditionally gone to larger-scale productions.

"In a year where we have been all been leading such isolated lives and movies felt so vital, we are proud to have produced a film about community and what connects us," said producer Peter Spears, accepting the award in a taped message.

The PGA Awards are watched especially closely as an Oscar bellwether. The producers use the same preferential ballot as the film academy, and its best-picture fields often mirror each other. This year, the producers nominated a few films the Academy passed over for best picture (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, One Night in Miami, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) while skipping one that landed the Oscar nomination: The Father.

In the 11 years since the Oscars expanded the Best Picture category, the two groups have picked the same winner eight times. They differed in 2020, when the guild chose 1917 and the Academy crowned Parasite; in 2017, when La La Land triumphed with the PGA and Moonlight won the Oscar; and in 2016, when the The Big Short topped the Producers' Awards and Spotlight won the Academy Award.

Other awards went to Pixar's Soul for animated film and My Octopus Teacher for documentary.

Wednesday's awards were held virtually and pre-taped for an invite-only audience. Opening the ceremony, black-ish actor Tracee Ellis Ross said of the show: "This, in and of itself, is an experiment in producing."