'The Interview': Chloé Zhao Is Yearning to Know How to Love

What It Covers

Director Chloé Zhao discusses her filmmaking approach on Hamnet, her midlife crisis journey, death doula training, fear of impermanence, and how she creates through embracing chaos rather than control. She explores the connection between artistic work and personal vulnerability, explaining how films help her process emotions she struggles to express in life.

Key Questions Answered

• •Directing through surrender: Zhao creates scenes without pre-planning dialogue, using music to harmonize the set's energy and allowing actors like Jessie Buckley to improvise from dream journals. She defends spontaneous moments in editing, believing truth emerges from collective improvisation rather than directorial control, balancing what she calls priestess energy with general energy.
• •Death as teacher: Zhao completed foundational death doula training in the UK to confront her lifelong terror of death, which prevented her from loving fully or living without fear of loss. She studied indigenous death practices across cultures, discovering that grief remains constant but modern medicalization creates unnatural shame around dying, adding suffering beyond the human condition's natural design.
• •Midlife transformation process: Zhao describes spending eighteen months in a chrysalis period where getting out of bed felt difficult and previous life goals lost meaning. She compares this to caterpillar decomposition, where every aspect of identity breaks down before rebirth begins. Hamnet provided purpose during this dissolution, helping her navigate the transition from winter to spring.
• •Fear of tribal rejection: Zhao traces her terror of failure and criticism to a primal fear of being cast out from her tribe, which manifests at award shows when watching non-winners' faces. She investigates whether this stems from leaving China at fourteen or professional setbacks, but concludes that pinpointing trauma's origin represents another form of control she must release.
• •Enchantment as birthright: Zhao believes Plato and Aristotle removed mystery from their mystical teachings, creating Western civilization's rationality-focused foundation that restricts divine access to artists and elites. She advocates that everyone should access enchantment without paying for pop stars or formal education, using creativity and imagination as tools to combat modern spiritual hunger and soul-level emptiness.