The Rider is my favorite film directed by Chloe Zhao
(Chloe Zhao and Brady Jandreau)
See their interview on youtube here
How, horse, actors, six man crew Chloe Zhao made Rider (Film Independent blog)
Happy birthday Chloe Zhao !
In 2017, Zhao directed The Rider, a contemporary western drama, which follows a young cowboy’s journey to self-discovery after a near-fatal accident ends his professional riding career.[38] The film was executive produced by her father, Yuji Zhao.[39] As with her first feature, Zhao engaged a cast of non-actors who lived at the filming location, in this case on a ranch.[40] Her inspiration came from Brady Jandreau—a cowboy she had met and befriended on the reservation where she shot her first film—who suffered a severe head injury when thrown from his horse during a rodeo competition.[41] Jandreau would star in the film, playing a fictionalized version of himself as Brady Blackburn
Zhao now resides in the Topatopa Mountains in Ojai, California with three chickens, Red, Cebe, and Lucille and two dogs, Taco and Rooster[81] and her partner and cinematographer, Joshua James Richards.[11] Richards and Zhao met while Zhao was researching for her first feature film Songs My Brother Taught Me and Richards was still a film student at NYU. He has been her cinematographer for her next two films and served as camera operator on Marvel’s Eternals.