Chloé Zhao is embracing a new eternal title.
The Hamnet director shared she’s started training to become a death doula—someone who provides “emotional, spiritual, and physical support to individuals who are transitioning to death,” according to CaringInfo—to confront her fear of dying.
“I just finished Level 1 training in the U.K.,” Chloé, 43, told The New York Times in an interview published on Jan. 24. “In one of the training sessions, we had to research Indigenous cultures from around the world, how they deal with death and dying both today and in the past. You can see that the grief of losing a loved one doesn’t change.”
She added, “However, the societal understanding of death and the space it gives to grief and how it’s embedded in the culture and the medicalization of death have shifted so much. In the modern world, when death is no longer seen as a natural part of life—because now, it’s about staying alive as long as we can—there’s almost shame around death.”
