Chloe Zhao says feminine consciousness' incompatible with current Hollywood model

"What I've learned from making Hamnet, said Zhao, is that feminine leadership and that doesn't mean just women, it means the feminine consciousness in all people is drawing strength from interdependence, not dominance. So it's drawing strength from intuition, relationships, community and interdependence. So it doesn't fit into the current model that we exist in, the container we exist in. It's difficult to come through, and I feel very lucky that I had people in power that trusted that this way of leading is needed for this story."

"Chloe Zhao, the Oscar-winning director of Nomadland, has said that the US film industry is not set up to foster gender diversity. Speaking at a Women in Motion talk at the Palm Springs film festival on Monday, Zhao was asked for her response to a recent study that found just nine of the 111 directors behind last year's 100 top grossing films in the US were women. Zhao is on the list with awards season favourite, Hamnet, a poetic exploration of the grief experienced by William Shakespeare (played by Paul Mescal) and his wife, Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley)."

Chloe Zhao said the US film industry is not set up to foster gender diversity. She described feminine leadership as a feminine consciousness in all people that draws strength from interdependence, intuition, relationships and community rather than dominance. Zhao said that this way of leading does not fit the current industry model and that she was fortunate to have people in power who trusted this approach for Hamnet. The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative recorded a decline to 8.1% of the 100 highest-grossing US films in 2025 being helmed by women, down from 13.4% the previous year. Hamnet opened in the US on 26 November and has earned $12m at the box office. Other noted successes included Celine Song's Materialists ($36.5m) and Nisha Ganatra's Freakier Friday ($94.2m). Stacy L Smith said the findings reveal that progress for women directors has been fleeting.

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