Our favorite spiritual film of 2020 is Nomadland which we summed up as "the remarkable odyssey of a feisty woman who finds community and her true self in her home on the road."

At the Golden Globes awards ceremony last week, Nomadland's director Chloe Zhao won Best Director and the film won Best Motion Picture, Drama.

In her acceptance speech, Zhao shared a definition of compassion she received from Bob Wells, a real-life nomad who appears in the movie:

"Compassion is the breakdown of all the barriers between us, a heart-to-heart pounding. Your pain is my pain. It's mingled and shared between us."

She continued:

"Now this is why I fell in love with movies and telling stories because it gives us a chance to laugh and cry together, and it gives us a chance to learn from each other and to have more compassion for each other." (Watch her full acceptance speech below.)

We've had those responses not only to Nomadland but also to Zhao's earlier films, The Rider and Songs My Brothers Taught Me. All these works confirm what Zhao said in an interview after the Golden Globes:

"I think the understanding and trying to see the world from the other person's perspective is the only way we can survive as a species."


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