Ojai Playhouse Film Festival
Directed by Chloe Zhao • 2025 • US
Starring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson
From Academy Award-winning writer/director Chloé Zhao comes the moving story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece.
From Academy Award-winning writer/director Chloé Zhao comes the moving story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece. The lived-in period detail and captivating performances from Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley as William and Agnes Shakespeare transport viewers to the era of the English Renaissance and reveal the power of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy as if experienced for the very first time. Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling novel, the story of HAMNET allows Zhao to follow the cinematic instincts she honed in THE RIDER (2017) and NOMADLAND (20220) and burrow deep into the beautiful, tragic muck of humanity, from which was born one of the world’s most enduring works of art.