Hamnet

Academy Award-winner Jessie Buckley gives the performance of her young career as a mother coping with loss and the tyranny of distance in Chloé Zhao's spellbinding masterpiece.

Young William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) takes a job tutoring for the well-to-do Hathaways to help repay his father's gambling debts. After glimpsing the Hathaways’ eldest daughter, Agnes, through the classroom window, he becomes captivated.

Rumoured to be the daughter of a forest witch, Agnes uses her mystical instincts to foresee William’s great success and her own death after bearing two children. When the couple unexpectedly welcome a third child, Agnes sees great misfortune hanging in the stars.

Curator's note
After beginning her career navigating the American genre film, director Chloé Zhao pivots to the English biopic with a film that plays loosely with literary history, richly with Elizabethan mysticism and deeply with intense human emotion.

Adapted from Maggie O'Farrell's adored and acclaimed 2020 novel, much of the film is indebted to the writer's creative approach to the fictionally augmented biography. However, Zhao's direction casts an almost magical spell of its own, with emotions felt like a thickness in the air.

Hamnet received the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Drama), with Jessie Buckley earning an enormous number of awards including the Oscar for Best Actress.