Chloe Zhao Returns to Oscar Form with Hamnet
By James Moreau | 21 Jan, 2026

After making history at the 93rd Academy Awards, filmmaker Chloé Zhao is back in the Oscar race with Hamnet.

Filmmaker Chloé Zhao has returned to the awards conversation with her film Hamnet, released in August 2025 to widespread critical acclaim.

Directed, edited, and written by Zhao, the adapted screenplay centers on Agnes, wife of William Shakespeare, as she struggles to overcome the loss of her only son Hamnet to the bubonic plague.

Prediction markets currently have the period drama listed as the second most likely film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, trailing only behind One Battle After Another. 

She reached a historic peak with the 2020 indie masterpiece Nomadland – which she also wrote, edited and co-produced.  The film swept the 93rd Academy Awards winning Best Picture and Best Director, making Zhao the first woman of color to achieve the feat.  Nomadland grossed nearly $40 million worldwide, a significant return for its modest $5 million budget.

Following her Oscar success Zhao transitioned to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2021 with Eternals.  She directed and co-wrote the cosmic epic, which earned $402 million at the global box office.

In 2017 Zhao released The Rider, a contemporary Western which has scored an astronomical 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.  It won the Art Cinema Award at Cannes.

Zhao’s first feature was Songs My Brothers Taught Me which debuted at Sundance in 2015.  It was developed over several years while she lived on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.  The film served as her feature thesis as an MFA student at NYU from which she graduated in 2014.

The 43-year-old was born in Beijing and raised there until 15 when she attended boarding school in London before finishing high school in Los Angeles.  She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 2005 with a bachelor’s in political science.