James Cameron, Ryan Coogler, Chloe Zhao

“Don’t you want to go to each other’s sets?” James Cameron, the director of Avatar: Fire and Ash, excitedly asked the other five participants on The Hollywood Reporter‘s blockbuster Directors Roundtable — Bugonia’s Yorgos Lanthimos, Hamnet’s Chloé Zhao, A House of Dynamite’s Kathryn Bigelow, Sentimental Value’s Joachim Trier and Sinners’ Ryan Coogler — as they discussed their different approaches to filmmaking. “I do!” replied Zhao, while Coogler added, “I’m loving everything I’m hearing.”

The sextet, who range in age from 74 (Bigelow) to 39 (Coogler) and hail from Canada (Cameron), China (Zhao), Norway by way of Denmark (Trier), Greece (Lanthimos) and the U.S. (Bigelow and Coogler), have between them 22 total Oscar nominations, three best director Oscar statuettes (Cameron for Titanic, Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, which made her the first woman to win the award, and Zhao for Nomadland, which made her the second) and incalculable moviemaking knowledge and experience.

If you hadn’t become a filmmaker, what would you be doing?

JAMES CAMERON I’d had to decide between exploration and science on the one hand and filmmaking on the other hand. And I’ve gone back and forth. I took eight years off from Hollywood to do seven deep-ocean expeditions [post-Titanic, pre-Avatar].

KATHRYN BIGELOW I’d be painting.

RYAN COOGLER I’d probably have a coffee shop. I got pretty good at making espressos.

YORGOS LANTHIMOS A baker. I could provide Ryan with my pastries.

CHLOé ZHAO A private detective.

JOACHIM TRIER I used to be a pretty good skater, but I’m too old now.

Was there one film that nudged you down this road?

CAMERON 2001: A Space Odyssey, not just because my mind was blown by the cinema of it but because I wanted to know how they did it.

ZHAO I grew up in Beijing, and we didn’t have Hollywood movies. [Cameron’s] The Terminator was the first one I ever saw, and I went, “Holy shit.”

BIGELOW The Wild Bunch. I saw it on a double bill with Mean Streets, and that was transformative.

TRIER My father was a sound designer on a Norwegian stop-motion animated film called The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix in the late ’70s when I was a kid. I went to set and saw grown-ups playing with the animation of dolls, and then saw the result of that.

COOGLER My dad took me to Malcolm X, and I remember just being overwhelmed by all of it.

LANTHIMOS Cinema for me, growing up in Greece, was Spielberg films like Indiana Jones and Jaws.

Let’s dive into your 2025 films. Kathryn, 50 years ago you made a short called Psychological Operations in Support of Unconventional Warfare. In 2002, you made K-19: The Widowmaker, about a nuclear sub that has an accident. And now comes A House of Dynamite, about America’s response to a nuclear attack. What’s at the root of your interest in this subject matter?

BIGELOW I’m curious about the military-industrial complex and foreign policy and how we are sort of at the mercy of it. I also have an interest in the prospect of nuclear war. I grew up in the duck-and-cover era — we had to hide under our desks in case of an atomic blast — and now it feels like the specter of it has returned, with a lot of saber-rattling around the world.

Jim, technology that makes possible “vicarious experience” was at the center of a film that you co-wrote and produced and Kathryn directed, 1995’s Strange Days, and it’s also at the center of your Avatar films, which you started writing that same year.

CAMERON We were developing those around the same time. The science fiction idea of technology that could project your mind into an alien body was more of a means to an end to place a character into a world. It was a way of looking at Indigenous culture and the way their values might be different. Avatar sort of gets a human audience to vote against themselves; the aspirational value of the Na’vi is we want to go back to that version of ourselves that was connected with nature.

Ryan, you’ve said you don’t make films unless you feel a personal connection to the material. What was it for Sinners?

COOGLER It all started with my uncle, who was the eldest male family member I had. He was from Mississippi and moved to Oakland when he was 20. I was born and raised in Oakland, and I used to love spending time with him. If he’d had enough whiskey, he’d tell me a story about Mississippi, and the blues was always on. Then I started making movies and moved away. In 2015, he got very sick. I wanted to be there, but I was in Philadelphia making Creed and then in L.A. finishing it. He’d tell me on the phone, “Don’t worry about me, man, handle your business.” But he ended up passing away while I was in postproduction, and I wasn’t there, and I had a lot of guilt around it. When I’d think about him, I’d put on those old songs that he’d had playing when we hung out, and I started to listen with a different ear and got obsessed. One day I was listening to one of his old songs, “Wang Dang Doodle,” and it hit me like a lightning bolt: This could be a movie. I love genre cinema, too — nobody knew that about me — so I thought it would be fun to make something a little more personal and pull from some of my favorite influences.

Yorgos, Bugonia is a reimagining of the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet! — but it speaks to our current moment, when a lot of conspiracy-minded people are “doing their own research.”

LANTHIMOS Will Tracy, who wrote the script, started working with Lars Knudsen and Ari Aster developing it, and then it came to me because they thought that I’d be interested in it. From the first time I read it, I felt like it was almost ready to be made — because of the reasons you mentioned but also because it was extremely funny, complex, relevant and different to the stuff I’ve done, but it also made absolute sense to me why they would think of me for it.

Chloé, even after Hamnet producers Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes asked you to direct it, you hesitated. Why?

ZHAO When they told me the logline about a mother losing a child, that was quite triggering. The character of a mother did not exist in my films before because, like many, I carry a quite deep mother wound. It’s the greatest wound a person can carry and probably the hardest one to heal. So the idea of making a film about that? I was like, “I don’t think so.” But I did go through a midlife crisis for four years [after 2021’s Eternals] and realized that if you don’t deal with something, it’s going to come get you, so I thought, “Maybe now is the time.”

Joachim, Sentimental Value, like most of your films, takes place in Oslo. It also centers on a family of artists who have a lot of intergenerational pain. You’re from Oslo and a family of filmmakers.

TRIER My grandfather [Erik Løchen] made a film that got into Cannes in 1960, but there wasn’t any infrastructure to really support him, so he only made one more feature in his life. I’ve thought a lot about him — he passed away when I was 9 — and I’m now the father of two young girls [like Stellan Skarsgard’s character in the film, a filmmaker]. This film also comes out of conversations with Eskil Vogt, my co-writer, about the meaning of this thing we do. I’m still struggling to understand why the hell we do what we do, and I tried to put that into the movie.

CAMERON It’s therapy.

TRIER Maybe it is.

People study your films in universities and write books about them, and they have theories …

CAMERON They’re always wrong, by the way. (Laughs.)

This is the opportunity to set them straight: Do you see a connective thread that runs through your films?

CAMERON All of mine are love stories of one form or another: a girl-meets-boy [Titanic], or a marriage that’s breaking up [The Abyss], or a woman creates a relationship with a girl that she feels protective of [Aliens]. People think of me as a very technical filmmaker, and I love to do that, but for me, it’s all about the heart.

ZHAO For me, it’s fear of death. I did not grow up in an environment where there is religion or a way of looking at it as a natural part of the human experience but more as something taboo and bad. I’m drawn to nature, especially nature that has not been tamed and controlled, so you have no choice but to be part of it. That’s why your films, Jim, are so magical and still so relevant, because once you’re forced to vibrate as part of nature, you become one with it, and then the illusion of separation dissolves and you’re fearless and no longer afraid to die.

Ryan, Michael B. Jordan has been in every one of your films going back to Fruitvale Station.

COOGLER For Fruitvale, I needed somebody to play this real guy who existed, who was murdered a few years before we started filming, and I was really into the fidelity of it. This young man was executed on camera, so people knew what he looked like where I was from, and that was really the only place I figured it would play, so if I cast somebody who didn’t look like Oscar Grant, I was dead in the water. I kind of narrowed it down, and Mike was one of the guys, and I started to look at his work with a critical eye, and it was just obvious to me that this dude was a movie star. He was in movies where he’d be, like, the third lead, or in a TV show in a supporting role, but he would find a way to be the person that people remembered. I wrote the screenplay, went to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab [in 2012], where I met Chloé. Joachim was our advisor, this genius—

TRIER I was a confused kid. You guys were so good.

COOGLER They played us Oslo [Trier’s 2011 film Oslo, August 31st], and everybody, like, ran to him for advice.

ZHAO I remember.

COOGLER My movie was set over the course of 24 hours, like his [Oslo], so I was soaking up all the advice. But yeah, I sat with Mike — we’re from 3,000 miles away, but roughly the same age — and we just clicked. Then we got on set and he was masterful. He’s got a lot of God-given talent and God, I mean, look how he looks — no control over that, he hit the lotto here — but he just works hard and is very selfless. The story I never told anybody was how we got linked up on Creed. While we were doing chemistry reads for Fruitvale, I got a call to go meet with Sylvester Stallone and pitch him. Stallone’s agent was like, “Yo, you gotta be here.” I’m like, “I’m in auditions for this movie.” He’s like, “You gotta be here or it ain’t going to happen.” So I had to explain to Mike that I had to leave the auditions. He was like, “Where are you going?” I’m like, “I’m going to make a Rocky movie.” He’s like, “If you put me in the movie, you can go.” I didn’t think it was going to happen, but we shook hands: “All right, bro, you can play in this movie if it goes.” That’s how it happened.

BIGELOW That’s great!

CAMERON Doors are only open for a split second, and he knew to go through it.

Yorgos, you and Emma Stone previously teamed up on The Favourite, Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness…

LANTHIMOS The Favourite was a great experience, and we kept building on that. There was a lot of trust between us, and we became very close friends, and she’s become a producer on the films because I want to run everything by her, because I trust her sensibilities and taste and thoughts about the entirety of a film. And we’re creating a bigger group around us that involves crew, as well, that comes back, and other actors. It’s become like a theater troupe, traveling around, making films in various places.

Joachim, Renate Reinsve had one line in Oslo, then was the lead of The Worst Person in the World and now Sentimental Value…

TRIER Because I’m obsessed with light, we waited for transitional light every morning for eight days on Oslo, and then shot something else for the rest of the day, so she was actually on set for nine days for that one line. Her character was hanging out with the main character throughout the night, and I would give her a task — bicycling around or hanging out at the party — and then I would look at the rushes, and everything she did was interesting. She made great choices. I didn’t really direct her much, but she was just a real human being, living in the background there, and I thought, “She’ll be a great star.” Then she got all these roles in theater, but no one cast her for lead parts in movies, so I wrote her Worst Person in the World.

Jim, you and Sigourney Weaver go back 40 years and four films to Aliens.

CAMERON I was terrified of Sigourney before I met her. She was Ripley [in 1979’s Alien, which Ridley Scott directed], and I had written this part [for the 1986 sequel], and I just prayed that she would like the script, which she did. When [2009’s] Avatar went out and became this huge thing, I brought Sigourney back from the dead! I wrote a whole other character for her [in Avatar 2 and 3].

I want to talk about where you guys are during a shot. Jim, you like to operate the camera. Joachim, you are right next to the camera?

TRIER I have a small monitor so I can check the frame, but I believe that to really judge what the camera gets, I need to look. I want to be there, and I want to feel it. I use rehearsals to train actors to accept my gaze. If you sit with your friends and stare at them all the time, they think you’re crazy. But when they see that I have — it sounds cheesy, but — a loving gaze, then I can be close and I’m allowed to be there.

Chloé, you started each day on Hamnet with a guided meditation.

ZHAO I went digging, in those four years of midlife crisis, to get out of my head and go into the subconscious. There were a couple of ancient modalities that I pulled out of mystery schools and union psychology to experiment with on Hamnet. There’s dream work — working with dreams. Sometimes we would put 300 extras under, into a collective dream, right before we called “Action!” And then there were tantric workshops, a Hindu tradition of working with energies and polarities. We would get Paul [Mescal] and Jessie [Buckley] in a polarity workshop to see how much they could get into their gendered polarity to the extreme and then let them clash into each other. Different kinds of somatic exercises. I don’t rehearse scenes, but I try to get the actors into their bodies and make them comfortable with each other.

COOGLER I’m loving everything I’m hearing.

Jim, you’ve said you’re not particularly interested in making an art house, film festival type of film—

CAMERON Let me contextualize that. I write a number of scenes in all my films that are very small, usually a two-hander or maybe even a solo scene, little intimate scenes between people. I love those scenes. I just do the other scenes too, the big shit. [laughs]

Chloé, you’ve said the opposite: “If I could, I would have all my films start at a festival.” Joachim, you’ve said, “I love the fact we have films with Tom Cruise, and I will see Mission: Impossible, but I’d never compromise the kind of creative control I’ve had from film one” on smaller-scale projects. But Jim, Kathryn and Ryan have found ways to maintain creative control on larger canvases. Ryan went from a $900,000 budget for Fruitvale Station to $40 million for Creed to $200 million Black Panther. Chloé went from $80,000 for The Rider to $5 million for Nomadland to $236 million for Eternals. Chloé and Ryan, did you feel a big difference going from relatively small-scale projects to Marvel?

COOGLER You feel it, for sure. I was fortunate that I did them all kind of back to back. I walked off one into the other, so the stair step was helpful. But yeah, you get new elements. The biggest one was second units. They had to explain to me what they were. Like, “Hey, he’s going to be directing another unit.” I was like, “What?” “He’s going to be a director.” I’m like, “What? Wait, excuse me?” They’re like, “Yeah, they don’t record sound.” I’m like, “They don’t have sound?!” I told them, “I’m not doing this second unit. I don’t understand it.” They said, “Well, what are your favorite action movies?” I said, “Terminator 2. If Terminator 2 had a second unit, then I’ll do it.”

CAMERON Oh, yeah, we had a second unit! (Laughs.)

COOGLER They printed out the credits. (Laughs.) But that was the big one. Just the concept of a whole other crew.

ZHAO I actually didn’t feel the difference very much. When you make a film [Nomadland] with $5 million in the desert with 27 people, without an AD, you do everything yourself. It’s extremely stressful. Then at Marvel, it was like, “Wow, people are doing stuff for me and things are taken care of!” You ask for something and it’s there. It’s great. But also, those 27 people stayed the same.

CAMERON I was going to say, there are many levels of extras and production and Musco lights and all that stuff. But I think the five people around the camera — the DP, AD and the principal actors in the scene — that intimacy never changes.

TRIER [In Norway,] I don’t make so much money off making a film, but I’m allowed to do my film. I remember going to the biggest screen in Oslo and watching The Abyss and dreaming of making grand images, and I still think I am, on my own small scale.

BIGELOW I don’t think scope makes size. I mean, Sentimental Value is huge, it’s gigantic! And Fruitvale, oh my God — its impact and story! That’s where the size is.

Ryan, with Sinners, you made a deal that 25 years from now, ownership of the film will revert to you.

BIGELOW That’s brilliant!

What made you decide, with this film, to seek that?

COOGLER I’m constantly looking at what everybody else is doing to find my way; I have a hard time leaping to a place that I haven’t at least seen somebody get to before. And I knew it was something that was possible. Filmmakers that I know had done it. I was fortunate enough to have made some movies that had some financial success. We were coming out of the writers and actors strikes. It was a scary time where it felt like, “Man, this next movie I do might be my last.” And really, Sinners is a movie about capitalism as much as anything, and my people’s relationship with it here in this country. My uncle was a sharecropper, like the folks in the film, who had been fucked over his whole life. I’m telling their story. So it was one of those things where we went out with the script and had a list of asks. Fortunately, a lot of studios were into it. It was heartwarming, and then terrifying, once Warner Bros. said, “All right, let’s go.” I didn’t want to make them look stupid, and I wanted to make the best movie we could. And if anybody looks to me and what I did for motivation, that’s awesome, because I definitely looked to Tyler Perry, M. Night Shyamalan and Quentin Tarantino.

ZHAO (To Cameron) Can you imagine if you’d had that deal when you made Avatar?

CAMERON I wish I had.

The two most veteran directors at this table are Jim and Kathryn. You were, of course, married from ’89 to ’91 …

CAMERON We were married longer ago than half our lives.

Then continued to make great films together, including the aforementioned Strange Days …

CAMERON We love working together.

And I know have been very supportive of each other since. I’m curious: What’s the biggest thing that you’ve each learned from the other?

CAMERON Authenticity. Kathryn cannot do anything that’s not authentic. I think it’s evolved to not be about pushing away that which is commercial; it’s figuring out what’s real in the world and then running that through her lens. And I look for that in my own work.

BIGELOW Oh, that’s very kind of you, thank you. I think the desire to just reach as far as you possibly can — that really comes from Jim, a reach that seems both improbable and impossible and yet is doable.

CAMERON You do it.

This story appeared in the Jan. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.