Hamnet

A drama by Chloé Zhao after Maggie O'Farrell's novel; Zhao wrote the screenplay together with the author of the book, and Max Richter composed the score. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal play the boy's parents. The picture carries the year 2025 from its first festival premiere and reaches wide release in 2026. O'Farrell's novel appeared in 2020 and turns on a single documented fact: William Shakespeare had a son named Hamnet who died in 1596 at the age of eleven. The cause of death is unknown, and only the parish record of the burial survives. Some years later the playwright wrote a tragedy whose title, in the spelling of the time, is the same as the boy's name. The book and the film tell this story from the side of the family left in Stratford while the father works in the London theatre. The central figure here is the mother, a woman named Agnes who knows herbs and people better than she knows letters. The grief of one household becomes a play that has been performed for four centuries.