Nomadland

Nomadland (2021) is Chloé Zhao's quiet road drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. When the gypsum plant in a small Nevada town shuts down, Fern, a woman in her sixties, loses her job and the only life she knew. She packs what little she owns into a battered van and drives off.

From there Fern joins the people who live on wheels, drifting across the American West for seasonal work. Frances McDormand carries the film with barely a line of dialogue; David Strathairn plays a fellow wanderer who keeps crossing her path. Many faces on screen belong to real nomads playing themselves. The work changes with the road: a holiday shift at an Amazon warehouse, cleaning a campground, sorting sugar beets in the cold.

Adapted from Jessica Bruder's nonfiction book, the film won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress, while Zhao became only the second woman to win for directing. Grief sits alongside desert sunsets here, and the result feels closer to a documentary than a tidy story. Stream Nomadland (2021) online on iFILM.