Chloé Zhao on Hollywood, Money and Neurodivergence as a ‘Superpower’

During a conversation at London Film Festival on Sunday, Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao got candid about Hollywood, the difficulty of financing films, how neurodivergence has impacted her storytelling and more.

Zhao’s devastating historical drama “Hamnet” — about the personal tragedy that led to the creation of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley — held its European premiere at the festival on Saturday night, where it was welcomed with plenty of emotion (and a surprise appearance from producer Steven Spielberg). Speaking about making the film, Zhao said that the experience made her “very passionate about rediscovering and remembering some older ways of storytelling that have been forgotten in our society.”

“Before we made everything factual and reasonable, there was a time where we’d see stories in different ways — from our dreams, our vision quests, from going into nature and listening to the birds,” she said. “So the language of ambiguity is, to me, vital for the health of a society. And I think even in Hollywood, in the film industry, we are not very good at preserving the language of ambiguity. If logos and mystery are in harmony, we would be living in a much better world.”

However, Zhao acknowledged that it’s oftentimes difficult to get stories like these financed for the big screen. Though profiting from a film is not her end goal, the filmmaker acknowledged that “money is really important.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m Chinese, I don’t know what is it, but I’m so afraid of owing people money. I don’t like it. I don’t like being in debt. I want the people who put the money into my films to get the money back,” Zhao said. “I don’t believe that my vision and whatever importance of my film should make people lose money. It’s just not for me. I try really hard to get financiers or studios to say, how much are you comfortable giving me…