Before Chloe Zhao and Hirokazu Kore-eda sat down for a conversation at the Tokyo International Film Festival, they cried as they watched each other’s films.
Director Koreeda watched Zhao’s “Hamnet” in a small screening room with only one other person, and was grateful that no one else came to see him cry. “I couldn’t stop crying,” admitted the Japanese director, moved by the film, which explores why creators tell stories and the collective act of experiencing tragedy together.
On the morning of our conversation, Zhao had woken up at 4 a.m., jet-lagged, to watch Kore-eda’s 1998 masterpiece Afterlife. She cried for an hour while the makeup team worked on her before the event. “I told Mr. Kore-eda that I felt that ‘Hamnet’ and ‘Afterlife’ were very much the same movie,” Chao told the TIFF Lounge audience. “Because when we see our lives reflected back to us, whether they are good or painful, it gives meaning to that experience and makes the human experience a little less difficult.”
Mutual admiration set the tone for an intimate conversation between two writers who shared more than they expected. Kore-eda is currently working on a new film, Sheep In The Box, starring Haruka Ayase and comedian Daigo, while the discussion comes as Zhao’s latest film is gearing up for the festival’s close.
The emotional connection reveals striking similarities in the way both directors approach their work. In both cases, you don’t know how the movie will end when you start shooting.
“When you start making a movie, you never know how it’s going to end,” Chao explained. “I’ll write it on a page that’s easy to read. Then I’ll get the green light and I’ll get the money to make the movie. But deep down I know, and often the lead actors know, that it doesn’t exist.”
This creative philosophy almost had disastrous results in “Hamnet.” Four days before production ended, Chao and lead actress Jessie Buckley were the only two people at the Globe Theater who knew that the film did not have a valid ending.
“We shot the ending exactly as it was in the script,” Chao recalls. “I watched it and said, ‘This isn’t going to work. There’s no movie,'” she recalled Buckley’s reaction. “Jesse looked at me like, ‘Is this it? After all I’ve been through, is this it?'”
The next morning, while driving through rainy London, I made a revolutionary discovery. Buckley sent in Ciao Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight,” an unforgettable track that appeared in “Arrival” and other films. “That song has a very special ability to harmonize your entire body with the world around you,” Chao said. “Suddenly you feel like you’re one with everything.”
While listening to this song, Chao found himself reaching out to the rain outside the car window. “I wanted to be close to nature so that I would no longer be afraid of losing love. Because if we are all one, we cannot lose love. It will only turn into something else.” In a moment of personal grief and creative despair, the true ending of the film is revealed.
“I’m always waiting for the ending to show. Without a movie, time always passes little by little, so it’s very stressful,” Chao admitted. “But that’s how life is.”
Director Kore-eda was understanding and revealed his unconventional process. He creates storyboards, but abandons them on set. “I’m always looking about two weeks ahead,” he said through an interpreter. “I look at the schedule, see which actors will be on set, and think about what I can do. I actually write and rewrite the script in that space. The staff may be nervous, but they rarely feel uncomfortable with what comes out.”
Chao made a distinction between the latest and past films. “‘Hamnet’ is a work that depicts an internal landscape, as opposed to ‘Nomadland,’ which depicts an external landscape,” she explained.
Working for the first time with cinematographer Lukasz Jarr, Chao shifted from the expansive scope of early American films to a more restrained one. “In my previous films, I was in my 30s and very keen to chase as many horizons as possible, so it was important for me to spread out far and wide. With ‘Hamnet,’ I was interested in how you could confine everything to one frame, one stage, one room and dig deeper.”
This theatrical approach led Chao to ask Kore-eda about his precisely composed frames, which often recall stage settings. The Japanese director explained that he and his cinematographer rarely communicate on set, preferring to explore each other’s intentions through the camera. “It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “If we were to follow the storyboards, we would just have to work within a tight schedule.”
When asked why he chooses to work on fiction rather than documentaries, Chao gave a surprising answer about courage, or lack thereof. “I think when you make a documentary, you’re saying, ‘This is me, this is the subject,'” she explains, citing Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss as an example of fearless documentary filmmaking. “I didn’t have the courage to do that job even in my 30s.”
But there was another reason, rooted in expression and dignity. Mr. Zhao spoke about marginalized communities in America, people living on reservations and people living in vans. They are often recorded with crude digital cameras in eerie light and studied as social problems rather than people.
“Being with their lifestyle allows you to experience some of America’s most beautiful landscapes,” Chao said. “And the cinematic treatment of movies, these pictorial images, are usually preserved for a certain class of people because of historical circumstances.”
Chao worked with his cinematographer to shoot during prime time and was particular about capturing these faces with the same cinematic treatment as Hollywood stars. “The quality of the lighting makes us feel at one with the light, and those sunsets and sunrises are actually experienced every day by people who don’t live in big cities or don’t have the privilege that many of us have.”
“Sometimes poetry can capture truth better than facts,” Chao concluded. “This is not just a fact, it’s an emotional truth.”
Zhao found unexpected freedom in her position as an outsider. “When I started making my own Westerns, I had only seen two and a half Westerns,” she laughs. “I didn’t have the burden that an American does when making a Western. And when I made this Shakespeare, I didn’t really know Shakespeare, so I didn’t have the burden of being an Englishman. Everything about Shakespeare is very sacred. I just do what I want to do.”
This blunt approach masks previous struggles. When Chao first came to America to attend school, she was so anxious about the language that she gave up on storytelling and studied politics instead. “I never thought I could tell a story. How can I tell a story if I can’t speak?”
However, her favorite movies had a lot of silence. She realized that “facial movements and body movements have a language.” “And when you don’t speak the language, you actually develop a special sensitivity to nonverbal interactions.” What was once a challenge has become an advantage.
Before our conversation, Mr. Zhao had watched Kore-eda’s 1998 masterpiece Afterlife. The film is about newly deceased people who must choose one memory that will last forever, while workers at a stop along the way create a film reenactment of those memories.
“I cried for an hour,” Chao confessed, explaining how the film resonated with Hamnet, the story of how Shakespeare and his wife deal with the death of their son. “Seeing your life reflected back to you, both the good and the bad, gives meaning to the experience and makes the human experience a little easier.”
She empathized with the characters in “Afterlife” who do not choose their memories and instead remain in limbo to help others. “My favorite memories in life are when I actually have beliefs and fantasies that are not real because of other people’s memories,” Chao said. “When you watch ‘Hamnet,’ you see that in real life, Shakespeare was also not very good at connecting and communicating, but on stage he can connect with everything. So it’s bittersweet for many of us who choose to be storytellers.”
Director Kore-eda, who made Afterlife in his 20s, acknowledged that this tension still exists in his 60s. “I want to continue creating works without being sarcastic about that feeling,” he said.
Mr. Zhao praised Kore-eda’s films for focusing on the mundane details of laundry, cooking, and everyday life, creating a meditative rhythm before the emotional tsunami hits. “Movies often show only the highs and very lows, beyond the middle 80%,” Zhao said. “But you invite us into the comfort of these daily rituals, and through that, it moves on and pushes us away. It’s kind of like a ritual, and that part loops. And when it hits you, it’s in your body.”
Director Kore-eda modestly accepted this compliment, saying that he did not know how successful it would be, but that he wanted to create a story out of the small emotional fluctuations of everyday life.
The conversation also touched on practical issues. Director Kore-eda adheres to improved labor regulations on production sites in Japan, shooting for about two months and trying to finish before dinner when children are on set. He also edits at night during production, sometimes sending the footage to his team for feedback the next day, a process that keeps the crew on their toes.
By contrast, Zhao requires eight hours of sleep and doesn’t touch editing during production. “I’m very easily influenced by everyone around me,” she explained. “If you edit something early on and it doesn’t work, you might change what you want to do.” “Hamnet” was shot from late July to September.
When asked about the tension between collaborative theatrical experiences and streaming platforms, both directors acknowledged the contradiction. Director Kore-eda said that he still cannot separate the act of watching a movie in the dark with someone else and the meaning of the movie for him. “That’s why we need film festivals. To make sure that experience continues.”
While Chao agreed with the importance of co-viewing (which is central to the theme of “Hamnet”), he also praised the way technology has democratized access. “Thanks to the iPhone and technology, ‘My Brothers Taught Me’ is now available to teens on the Lakota Reservation in South Dakota. I think this is incredible.”
Looking to the future, Chao said he believes the story chooses the filmmaker, not the other way around. “When the conduit, the lightning rod is ready, it will come.”
She noticed a pattern. While the first three films explored identity, home, and belonging, “The Eternals” and “Hamnet” were about the dissolution of illusions of unity and separation. “I think that’s what I’m looking for. How can we dissolve the illusion of separation that we feel with each other and feel the same sense of oneness that we feel at birth or when we are in nature?”
“I believe in the power of threes,” she added. “I made two about it, so I think there’s a third one. I don’t know what that is.”
As for director Kore-eda, he continues to work on “Sheep In The Box” while maintaining a work-life balance that can’t be called balanced at all. “I’ve become a person who’s always working, and that’s not something I’m uncomfortable with,” he admitted. But he wants young filmmakers to know that you don’t have to be a 60-year-old workaholic to make movies. “It would be great if people thought that making movies can be fun, even if they choose it as a career.”
