London Film Festival 2025: Chloe Zhao screen talk
It’s Day 5 of London Film Festival (October 8-19) and Oscar winner was at the BFI Southbank earlier this morning
London 2pm BST
STAR director Chloe Zhao whose latest film, ‘Hamnet‘ is garnering huge praise everywhere talked about her 10-year directing career with critic Rhianna Dhillon, and shared her way of looking at the world – considerably influenced by her neuodivergence, which she called her superpower.
She said that she often ‘feels’ people – they can be smiling but she can sense they are hiding sadness.
She worked a lot with non professional actors at the start of her filmmaking career and said that she feels everything around her – vibrations and energy and tries to balance her feminine and masculine side (the Yin and Yang of traditional Chinese culture) and finds masculinity fascinating because it has hidden things.
Screening a clip from ‘Hamnet‘ her favourite, she remembered how much Shakespeare had influenced her – the audience saw a clip also from ‘Nomadland‘ where the central character of Fran (Frances McDormand) recites the famous Shakespeare sonnet, ‘Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s Day’. In the ‘Hamnet’ scene screened, Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) has to tell his wife (Jessie Buckley) that he is leaving for London (after the demise of their son) – acv has not seen the movie but it is likely to be a surefire hit with both Mescal and Buckley likely to be in strong Oscars contention too.
Influenced a lot of by Japanese Manga Art when she was growing up in Beijing, she talked also about the Sunday screenings of Hollywood movies on TV. She cited the first three she saw – ‘Terminator‘, ‘Ghost’ and ‘Sister Act’.
See our Reel Content on this soon and also further updates in real time…
The full video Screen Talk will be out on the BFI’s YouTube soon…
