Chloe Zhao reveals the areas of improvement for Hollywood

Mumbai, Oct 12 (IANS) Chinese filmmaker Chloe Zhao, who is known for her work on ‘Eternals’, and ‘The Rider’, feels there are a few grey areas where Hollywood needs improvement.

The Oscar-winning director got candid about Hollywood, the difficulty of financing films, and how neurodivergence has impacted her storytelling, reports ‘Variety’.

Her 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 London Film Festival recently.

As per ‘Variety’, at the festival, the film was welcomed with plenty of emotion (and a surprise appearance from producer Steven Spielberg).

Speaking about making the film, Chloe 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, the director 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”.

She went on, “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”.

“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 so that you can survive as a company, please. And then I’ll do it within that. So I think it’s really helpful because limitations, I promise, are your best friend”, she added.

--IANS

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