‘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.

Presenter: Anita Rani

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