Chloé Zhao, director: I was an outsider

‘It's so far from your reality because I didn't know anybody and I was an immigrant’

Anita Rani speaks to the Beijing-born director Chloé Zhao about her career and her latest film, Hamnet.

Zhao made history in 2021 when, at the age of just 39, she became the first woman of colour - and, at the time, only the second woman ever - to win the best director award at the Oscars.

Now, just five years after her Oscars triumph for Nomadland, Zhao is making headlines once again as the director of the critically-acclaimed movie Hamnet, a dramatisation about the son of the English playwright William Shakespeare. It won two Golden Globe awards, including one for ‘Best Drama Movie’, and has recently been nominated for 8 Academy Awards too.

Thank you to the Woman’s Hour team for their help in making this programme. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with Indian author Twinkle Khanna, former US Vice President Kamala Harris, and Hollywood legend Sir Anthony Hopkins. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Anita Rani Producers: Emma Pearce, Ben Cooper and Lucy Sheppard Editor: Justine Lang

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(Image: Chloé Zhao. Credit: Emma McIntyre/WireImage)