It was, however, a huge achievement. Born in China, Chloe Chow is the first non-white female director to receive a Best Director award, and her film won a Medal of Honor: an Oscar for Best Picture.

However, most of the state media, which used to celebrate the exploits of their citizens without restrictions, remained silent. Neither Xinhua News Agency nor CCTV, the two largest government-controlled media organizations, reported the Chloe Chow awards.

Chloe Zhao has been at a disadvantage with the Chinese authorities since a 2013 interview, in which she made statements that appeared to be critical of the regime, resurfacing in March. She referred to her homeland as a place Where there are lies everywhere.

Bedouin It was scheduled to hit Chinese screens on April 23, but the film was quietly pulled from theaters after a national storm sparked by the director’s comments.

After the Oscars, on Chinese social networks including the hugely popular site Weibo, government censors removed messages celebrating the resounding success of their compatriots abroad and blocked hashtags referring to them.

Internet users who performed a search query including words Bedouin Or, Zhao Ting (the director’s Chinese name) found on the Douban app, popular with moviegoers, the following: Search results may not be displayed, according to applicable laws and policies.

Override oversight to highlight achievement

If some informative pages about Chloé Zhao and her movie remain available on social networks and the web, many discussions among users about it have been deleted.

Despite everything, quite a few netizens, bloggers and bloggers received the news and celebrated it on their personal accounts, congratulating the director in particular for opening her acceptance speech, as she quoted a famous Chinese poem in Mandarin.

Others have used multiple tricks, for example with cryptographic keywords, to emphasize rewards their countrymen have earned. Many felt sorry for not being able to see the movie.

When questioned by the US media, the Chinese Foreign Ministry refused to comment on the news, arguing that it was not a matter of a diplomatic nature.