Haolu Wang

Haolu Wang is a Chinese director and screenwriter. She has created several short films and one feature film, and directed episodes for television shows including Black Mirror and Doctor Who.

Early life and education Wang was born in Xuzhou, Jiangsu. She learned English as a child by watching television and buying pirated DVDs on the weekends, including Léon: The Professional and the Three Colours trilogy.

In 2006 she enrolled at Colby College in Maine, graduating in 2010 with degrees in government and economics. Her first job after graduation was at an investment firm in Hong Kong, during which she bought DVDs on her lunch breaks to watch after work.

Flip Flops (2015) was Wang's first short film, shot in Hong Kong with a crew of locals and students from Hong Kong Baptist University.

Her first feature film was A Dutiful Wife, a psychological thriller about a woman attempting to cover up her husband's disappearance. It received the ArteKino International Award at the 50th International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2021.

Following the release of Doctor Whos thirteenth series, Wang directed the second of three 2022 specials, "Legend of the Sea Devils". The next year, she co-directed the Netflix show Bodies with Marco Kreuzpaintner, directing the second half of the miniseries. For Bodies, Wang was nominated for the Best Emerging Talent in Fiction award at the 2024 British Academy Television Craft Awards.

In 2025, she directed "Hotel Reverie", an episode in the seventh series of Black Mirror, starring Issa Rae and Emma Corrin. She was nominated for a NAACP Image Award for her work on the episode. Wang, whose episode dealt with the use of artificial intelligence in film production, said she hoped that "people will realise AI is terrible for creativity", and that she was against "the cruelty of AI in reducing people, humanity and actors to just data points".

Filmography Film Year Title Notes 2013 Labyrinth of a Dream Short film 2014 Being James Short film 2015 Flip Flops Short film 2016 Emma Short film 2017 The Blender Short film 2018 Lao Wai Short film 2019 The Pregnant Ground Short film 2021 A Dutiful Wife

Television Year Title Episode(s) 2022 Doctor Who Episode: "Legend of the Sea Devils" 2023 Bodies Episodes 5–8 2025 Black Mirror Episode: "Hotel Reverie"