Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland was already the first movie to ever win the top prize at both the Toronto International Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival, and that was before it also took home the Best Picture honor from the National Society Of Film Critics and made it onto the list of The A.V. Club’s favorite films of 2020. To say it has Oscar buzz would be a dramatic understatement, then, if only because no other movie has ever had this specific kind of buzz. Better yet: You won’t even have to leave the comfort of your quarantine bubble to see it for yourself (unless you choose to, after recognizing and accounting for the risks involved in seeing a movie in theaters).
According to Variety, Nomadland will be released in theaters and at drive-ins on February 19, and it’ll be available to stream on Hulu that same day. (Variety points out that Nomadland is distributed by Searchlight, which, like Hulu, is now owned by Disney.) If your setup at home isn’t big enough, though, Nomadland will also be getting an Imax rollout shortly before that theatrical/streaming premiere, hitting select super-big screens on January 29.
Nomadland stars Frances McDormand as a member of a loose community of older people who spend their years traveling around the country in search of temporary jobs in the wake of an economic downturn. In her Nomadland review, Katie Rife said that it is “a condemnation of a system that rewards decades of corporate loyalty with poverty and insecurity” but that it’s also “remarkably clear-eyed and honest about the pleasures and benefits of life on the road.”