Director Chloe Zhao’s Shakespeare family tragedy Hamnet wins top Toronto film prize

Toronto – Hamnet, a devastating period drama about the life of English playwright William Shakespeare and his family, won the top prize at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept 14.

The heartrending movie stars Irish actor Paul Mescal as Shakespeare, who tries to forge a career as a playwright while his wife Agnes – played by Irish actress Jessie Buckley – contends with the perils of plague and childbirth in Elizabethan England.

It comes from China-born film-maker Chloe Zhao, 43, who directed the Oscar-winning Nomadland (2020). Securing the Toronto award, on top of glowing reviews, confirms Hamnet as another Academy Award front runner.

The film is based on a novel by Northern Irish author Maggie O’Farrell, which colours in the gaps of the little people know about the Shakespeares. “Maggie’s novel, it was like a poem,” said Zhao.

Novel and film speculate that Agnes encouraged William to move to London solo and pursue his dreams in the theatre, confident that their love was strong enough to endure the separation.

“To see them fall in love and come together, be torn apart... it’s an inner civil war that we all battle with as we grow and mature,” said Zhao.

The couple had a son called Hamnet – a name that scholars say would have sounded indistinguishable from Hamlet at the time the play was written.

Unlike festival prizes bestowed by Cannes and Venice, the Toronto People’s Choice Award is selected by public audiences. Any movie in the festival’s entire official line-up is eligible, unlike the curated “in competition” shortlists used elsewhere.

It has successfully anticipated several recent Oscar best picture winners, including Green Book (2018) and Zhao’s Nomadland, although its predictive power has waned in the past few years.

Second prize at Toronto went to Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro’s lavish new Frankenstein adaptation, while third place went to Wake Up Dead Man, the latest instalment of English actor Daniel Craig’s whodunnit Knives Out franchise (2019 to present).

The award for top documentary was presented to a divisive film about an Israeli ex-soldier’s efforts to rescue his family from the Oct 7 Hamas attacks.

The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue – which was initially being cut from the festival line-up for ostensibly technical reasons, before being reinstalled under protest – premiered at Toronto under heavy police presence.

Groups supporting Israel and the Palestinians faced off outside the venue before the screening of the film, which charts how retired Israeli general Noam Tibon saved his family and others during the 2023 Hamas attack.

Toronto’s new International People’s Choice Award went to No Other Choice, a thriller from Park Chan-wook, the veteran South Korean director of classics including Oldboy (2003). AFP