Hamnet is a 2025 historical drama film directed by Chloé Zhao, who co-wrote the screenplay with Maggie O’Farrell, based on O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name. The film is based on the family life of William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes Hathaway, as they cope with the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet. It stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal as Agnes and William, alongside Emily Watson and Joe Alwyn in supporting roles.
In 1596, William Shakespeare’s eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, lost his life. History records the fact in a single line. No cause, emotion, and no aftermath. What Hamnet the film imagined is everything history left unsaid, the interior life of a family struck by unbearable loss, and the quiet, devastating ways grief reshapes love, memory, and art.
Hamnet premiered at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival on August 29, 2025, and received a limited theatrical release by Focus Features in the United States and Canada on November 26. It received a wide theatrical release on December 5 and was released by Universal Pictures in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2026. The film received critical acclaim, with the performances of Buckley and Mescal receiving praise, and was listed among the top ten films of 2025 by the American Film Institute.
What makes Hamnet powerful is its refusal to dramatize Shakespeare’s grief in grand speeches or theatrical gestures. Instead, it shows how sorrow fractures a family unevenly. A father who leaves. A mother who stays. Twins bound by something almost mystical. A household haunted not by ghosts, but by the echo of a voice that should still be there.
