Even as a Shadow, Even as a Dream is the debut book by Academy Award-winning
director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, 2020), actor Jessie Buckley, and photographer
Agata Grzybowska, created during the making of Zhao’s latest film Hamnet (2025).
Rooted in the expansive dream-work that shaped Zhao’s creative process, the book
emerges from a series of artistic rituals shared between these three
collaborators, through which Zhao’s cinematic storytelling, Buckley’s
mesmerising writings, and Grzybowska’s haunting photographs were made. Brought
together in this book, they conjure a parallel telling of the story of Hamnet,
the son of William Shakespeare. Even as a Shadow, Even as a Dream unfolds as a
quiet companion to the film: not a document of its making, but a powerful
reimagining that exists somewhere in the threshold between the worlds of waking
and dreaming, reality and illusion, life and death. Hamnet is in select theaters
this November.
