Open Air: Hamnet (engl. OmU)

HAMNET (Original Version with Subtitles)

Directed by Chloe Zhao

126 min / Ages 12 and up

With HAMNET, Oscar® winner Chloé Zhao returns to the big screen. This film adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Maggie O’Farrell—who co-wrote the screenplay with Zhao—tells the story of William Shakespeare’s family. Through the eyes of his sensitive wife Agnes, we witness how she falls in love with the great Bard and how the two plan a life together. When their only son, Hamnet, dies of the plague at the age of eleven, their great love threatens to be suffocated. In the midst of this terrible personal tragedy, Shakespeare, in deep despair and grief, begins to write “Hamlet,” one of the greatest plays in literary history. Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name was published in 2020, received rave reviews, and won the British Women’s Prize for Fiction as well as the American National Book Critics Circle Award. HAMNET was produced by Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, and Nicolas Gonda, as well as by the two legendary Oscar® winners Sam Mendes and Steven Spielberg.