When Chloé Zhao was growing up, she dreamed not of directing movies but becoming a manga artist.
“But I wasn’t very good at drawing. I wasn’t up to standard,” she said with a laugh during a wide-ranging masterclass about her career on Friday afternoon at the Venice Film Festival. “I wanted to tell stories. I didn’t think cinema was an option for me.”
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Of course, Zhao found her way into film and directed acclaimed movies such as 2020’s Oscar-winning “Nomadland” and 2025’s Shakespearean drama “Hamnet.” She was eventually able to meld her passions with 2021’s Marvel adaptation “Eternals,” which starred Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie and revolved around an immortal alien race sent to protect Earth from evil beings.
“I loved doing it,” she said of directing the movie. “For any of you who love anime, I know you know this was a girl’s dream come true. Comic books are the western equivalent of [manga]. They are very different, but I live in the west, and that’s what I had access to.”
Although superhero movies have waned in popularity since the pandemic — even “Eternals” fell short of box office expectations with $400 million globally against a $200 million-plus budget — Zhao sees the value in all forms of popular entertainment. That’s unlike, say, Martin Scorsese, who has infamously likened Marvel movies to “theme parks.”
“I do feel it’s important to not write off stories because we don’t consider them high art,” she said. “The purpose of storytelling for me, humbly, is to create containers for people … to try to process what they need to process. Archetypes are such a great way to do it — and we see them in myths — is because it’s something we all share.”
She even drew a parallel between the big-budget tentpole “Eternals” and “Nomadland,” a sweeping, lyrical drama about a widow who loses her job, leading her to live out of her car and travel around the U.S. for work, after the moderator suggested a sharp contrast between the back-to-back projects.
“What contrast? It’s people in nature… with animals… who have complicated relationships with them,” Zhao said.
This marks a return to Venice for Zhao, having premiered “Nomadland” on the Lido in 2020. The film, starring Frances McDormand, was honored with the prestigious Golden Lion before Zhao became only the second woman ever to win best picture at the Academy Awards. Zhao was back in the awards race for “Hamnet,” which fictionalizes the family life of Shakespeares. The tear-jerker scored eight Oscar nods and one win for Jessie Buckley as William’s wife Agnes.
During Friday’s masterclass, Zhao shared that she didn’t grow up watching a lot of films. And in her late 20s, she spent years as a bartender and described feeling “lost” before finding her way to movies.
“I was still longing to tell stories,” she said. “Film became a very natural choice. I always say film directors don’t actually need to know how to do anything really well. I see it as someone who is going to manage an ecosystem, bringing everyone together.”
Despite her towering success, Zhao admits that, more recently, she’s been pondering an existential question as a filmmaker.
“My life is occupied by screens. Am I missing life because I was always there trying to capture it?” she asked rhetorically. “I am going through that crisis right now.”
