{"id":2121,"date":"2026-03-10T21:08:37","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T21:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filmfreeway.com\/articles\/?p=2121"},"modified":"2026-03-10T21:08:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T21:08:37","slug":"chloe-zhao-hamnet-directing-techniques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmfreeway.com\/articles\/chloe-zhao-hamnet-directing-techniques\/","title":{"rendered":"What Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s &#8216;Hamnet&#8217; Teaches Us About Directing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When \u201cHamnet\u201d (2025) was first offered to Chlo\u00e9 Zhao, she wanted to pass. It had been four years since her last film, Marvel\u2019s \u201cEternals\u201d (2021), and Zhao\u2014who earned two Oscars for bringing nomadic America to life in \u201cNomadland\u201d (2020)\u2014was deep in what she described to <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/IKLm3w341AM?si=Cu5w_cfMalopBGjT&t=780\">\u201c<mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">The Interview<\/mark><\/a>\u201d podcast as a midlife crisis. Yet it was exactly this moment of existential questioning that would intimately connect her to the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHamnet,\u201d a fictionalized account of William and Agnes Shakespeare\u2019s marriage, is adapted from Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s acclaimed 2020 novel of the same name, with a screenplay written by Zhao and O\u2019Farrell. The story follows William (Paul Mescal) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley), two outcasts of their own families who fall into a feral kind of love. After the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), the couple navigate their agonizing grief, which tests their love for each other and for life itself. And from that grief, Will creates \u201cHamlet.\u201d Here are the lessons filmmakers can learn from Zhao\u2019s work on the eight-time Oscar-nominated film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Find a personal way into the story.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>When Zhao was initially offered the film, she didn\u2019t feel like she was the right choice. \u201cI didn\u2019t think I had the life experience to tell the story,\u201d she told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/movies\/movie-features\/chloe-zhao-hamnet-tiff-interview-paul-mescal-jessie-buckley-1236355477\/\"><mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">the Hollywood Reporter<\/mark><\/a>. She assumed the project would center on Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cHamlet,\u201d a darker tale of death and madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was not until she read O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel that Zhao understood how deeply she resonated with \u201cHamnet.\u201d What she found there was the character of Agnes\u2014a woman who expresses a full spectrum of emotions without shame and who exists in her body rather than her intellect. Zhao recognized in Agnes a consciousness she had been working to access in herself for years but had never put onscreen. \u201cThat part of me, that character, does not exist in my films until this one,\u201d she told <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2025\/12\/hamnet-chloe-zhao-jessie-buckley-paul-mescal-interview-1236631211\/\"><mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">Deadline<\/mark><\/a>. \u201cI knew I was working on bringing her through myself for about four years, and then I was ready to do this film.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That personal reckoning became the lens through which Zhao made her directorial decisions. Alongside her costume and production design teams, she assigned Agnes the color red, which she told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/entertainment\/movies\/articles\/hamnet-tie-eternals-chlo-zhao-173414800.html\"><mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">Yahoo<\/mark><\/a> represents the root chakra: earthy, embodied, and alive. By contrast, Will appears consistently in blue, evoking the intellectual and the ethereal. After Hamnet dies, color is stripped entirely from Agnes and Will\u2019s bedroom\u2014a wordless yet visceral depiction of grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Zhao spent roughly six days filming Buckley\u2019s reactions to capture the film\u2019s climactic Globe Theatre sequence, when Agnes watches \u201cHamlet\u201d performed for the first time and slowly realizes that her husband has transformed their son\u2019s death into art. \u201cWe knew, even from the book, it is going to be Agnes\u2019 experience,\u201d Zhao told <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2025\/12\/hamnet-chloe-zhao-jessie-buckley-paul-mescal-interview-1236631211\/\"><mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">Deadline<\/mark><\/a>, \u201cso we had been filming her face for about six days leading up to that. But also on her face, that is where the audience are going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oftentimes, the question behind making a film is \u201cWhy should this story be told?\u201d But for a filmmaker as intentional as Zhao, the question to begin with is: \u201cWhy should <em>I<\/em> be telling this story?\u201d The ability to answer that question is what makes direction emotionally immersive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"680\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" alt=\"Hamnet\" class=\"wp-image-2124 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/filmfreeway.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2026\/03\/4238_D033_00617_R_rgb-1024x680.jpg\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">4238_D033_00617_R\n<br>Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes in director Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s HAMNET, a Focus Features release.\n<br>Credit: Agata Grzybowska \/ \u00a9 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Think in circles.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Once Zhao committed to \u201cHamnet,\u201d she almost immediately hit a wall with the opening. \u201cFor me, the beginning of a script is always the hardest to write,\u201d she told Bradley Cooper for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.interviewmagazine.com\/film\/chloe-zhao-and-bradley-cooper-go-super-deep-on-hamnet\"><mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">Interview magazine<\/mark><\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to start films, because I feel like the beginning and ending isn\u2019t a line, it\u2019s a circle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Zhao left the beginning of the script open, which gave her space to find the right opening shot after the rest was written. She explained to Cooper that shortly before scouting locations in Wales, she had been in Kyiv, visiting a filmmaker working on the frontline of the war. The forests there were scarred with holes from landmines and military dugouts. When she eventually arrived in Wales, she scouted a forest with naturally occurring holes in the dirt beneath the trees, bringing her back to those images. \u201cI just sobbed and sobbed by this hole, feeling like death in some way connects us,\u201d she explained. \u201cSomehow it became clear to me\u2014this hole has to be at the beginning of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Opening with this image plants the seed of death: a feeling that shadows the narrative through every season of Agnes and Will. From their budding love to their growing family, the inevitability of winter looms over the story until it finally arrives. But even when Hamnet dies, Zhao doesn\u2019t leave us there. The momentum built through her circular storytelling generates the anticipation of seasonal change. Will faces the death of his son and turns to his art to process his grief. And when he finally reveals \u201cHamlet\u201d to Agnes and the world, they arrive at death again, but with a different perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Use a holistic approach to actor preparation.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>A story as traumatic and emotional as \u201cHamnet\u201d required Zhao and her collaborators to enter difficult territory together. To help ensure their choices \u201ccame from the body, not from the mind,\u201d as she told <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/f5cddr3UeXM?si=oygX_jSuqgsM7trM\"><mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">the Hollywood Reporter<\/mark><\/a>, Zhao enlisted what she called \u201cancestral wisdoms,\u201d she explained to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/features\/podcast\/hamnet-director-chloe-zhao-original-music-art-1235159070\/\"><mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">IndieWire<\/mark><\/a>. These techniques\u2014ranging from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment-arts\/awards\/story\/2025-12-14\/hamnet-paul-mescal-jessie-buckley-chloe-zhao-fiona-crombie-digital-cover\"><mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">group dream work<\/mark><\/a> with large casts of extras to <a href=\"https:\/\/people.com\/jessie-buckley-tantric-workshop-with-paul-mescal-for-hamnet-11879936\"><mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">tantric energy workshops<\/mark><\/a> with her leads\u2014were designed to get the cast working from a place of physical intuition rather than intellect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To film a particularly emotive scene when Agnes and Will clash as he prepares to leave for London alone shortly after Hamnet\u2019s death, Zhao skipped rehearsals entirely. Instead, the director\u2014who has trained as a tantric practitioner\u2014had Buckley and Mescal partake in an energy workshop designed to let them \u201cfeel safe to be in their most extreme polarity of their gender,\u201d she told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QfTiQzQ-DoM\"><mark style=\"background-color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\">Vanity Fair<\/mark><\/a>. The result is a scene that deftly captures the ways trauma can split a couple open. Each person\u2019s survival mechanism becomes the very thing that deepens the other\u2019s pain. Will\u2019s need to flee into his work feels like abandonment to Agnes; Agnes\u2019 refusal to let the loss be minimized feels like an accusation to Will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Zhao\u2019s ability to build containers in which her collaborators can access something deeper than performance is what makes \u201cHamnet\u201d exceptional. Every technique serves to strip away the intellectual and arrive at something visceral. It\u2019s a major directorial accomplishment, and a reminder that creative inspiration can come from traditions far older than cinema itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s what filmmakers can learn from Zhao\u2019s approach to story, character, and unconventional actor preparation in \u201cHamnet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":2123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Directing Techniques From Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s \u201cHamnet\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From circular storytelling to tantric rehearsal techniques, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s direction of \u201cHamnet\u201d offers a blueprint on accessing emotions.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/filmfreeway.com\/articles\/chloe-zhao-hamnet-directing-techniques\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Directing Techniques From Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s \u201cHamnet\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From circular storytelling to tantric rehearsal techniques, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s direction of \u201cHamnet\u201d offers a blueprint on accessing emotions.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/filmfreeway.com\/articles\/chloe-zhao-hamnet-directing-techniques\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmFreeway\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-03-10T21:08:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/filmfreeway.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2026\/03\/4238_D004_00321_R_rgb-1024x680.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"jalen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kyle DeGuzman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/filmfreeway.com\\\/articles\\\/chloe-zhao-hamnet-directing-techniques\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/filmfreeway.com\\\/articles\\\/chloe-zhao-hamnet-directing-techniques\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"jalen\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/filmfreeway.com\\\/articles\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/591baa98fd782d61dc5f30b220dba9c1\"},\"headline\":\"What Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s &#8216;Hamnet&#8217; 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