'Songs My Brothers Taught Me' paved the way for Oscar winner Chloé Zhao

On Sunday night, director Chloé Zhao became the first woman of colour to win an Oscar for best director and best picture, for Nomadland. She also became only the second female director in Oscar history to win the award.

Zhao's next film will be very different to the three she's made so far — a big-budget Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) blockbuster called Eternals, which will feature the MCU's first gay superhero and its first deaf one. Zhao approached Disney to direct, rather than being head-hunted to join the fold of the biggest franchise in the world.

But before Zhao reached these heights she was the director of two small docu-fictions starring non-professional actors that explored life in the margins of America. They were both filmed against the awesome backdrop of the landscape of the Dakotas. The first of these, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, is now available to South African viewers on the mubi.com platform.

It provides evidence of the approach that Zhao has used to such good effect in Nomadland, while also evoking an empathetic, ultimately hopeful rather than hopeless world in which characters, trapped by the circumstances created by historical injustice and indifference, manage to find something to hold onto in spite of the historical inequity of their social milieu.

It's an outsider's perspective of American outsiders that views its characters through a lens that tries to emphasise their human dignity.

Zhao grew up as the daughter of a wealthy Chinese industrialist in the era of the opening up of that country to global capitalist forces in the 1990s, before she found herself in the US as a film student, drawn to the landscapes and people of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

There she found John Reddy, the lead in this film, in the pages of a high-school year book. She used his story and those of the other residents as the basis for a small, powerful film about one young man's attempt to escape the claustrophobic, depressing patterns of life on the reservation by whatever means possible.

The film was shot, like her other features, including Nomadland, by her partner, cinematographer Joshua James Ridges, using a single digital camera and on a shoestring budget. It was made using the participation and buy-in of the reservation's residents, who play versions of themselves.

Songs is built on trust between Zhao - a wealthy outsider - and her subjects, the residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation, which includes some of the poorest counties in the US. The lives of the people living there are, predictably enough, shaped by high incidences of alcoholism and poverty.

Songs follows the story of a teenager named Johnny Winters (Reddy) who wants to follow his girlfriend Aurelia (Taysha Fuller) to Los Angeles. He has no real idea of what he'll do once he gets to LA and feels guilty about leaving his 11-year-old sister Jashuan (Jashuan St John) alone with their alcoholic mother Lisa (Irene Bedard).

Johnny's plans seem about to come together thanks to a side hustle he's set up selling bootlegged booze to residents to save up the cash he needs for his trip.

When his plans fall apart due to factors he ultimately can't control, the mood of the film becomes one of quiet desperation that reflects the hopeless situation of the reservation and its residents.

That's pretty much the extent of the plot but, through a series of carefully and empathetically observed vignettes, Zhao manages to convey much that isn't directly said about the place and its people.

Ultimately we're given a refreshing sense of hope, not so much by Johnny but by his 11-year-old sister's independence and by her ability to make something hopeful and positive of the unique environment around her. The film isn't always easy to watch but neither does it sink into self-pity.

This is because of the unique relationship between the director and her subjects, which is built on a trust made possible by the long time Zhao spent listening to them and trying
to understand their stories before committing them to film.

It's a beautiful film about ordinary, courageous characters who refuse to be victims or objects of pity in spite of the obstacles that have been placed in their paths. It's also a testament to the sensitivity and empathy of its director, qualities that led to her historic Oscar win.

• 'Songs My Brothers Taught Me' is available on mubi.com