Hamnet by Chloé Zhao, Where Fiction and Courage Meet Life

In Hamnet, contrasts are the language of the story. Life confronts death, love encounters hate, and the imagined threads through the real. Presence and absence echo with equal intensity, touching what is lived and what is held inside.

It is one single theatre of emotions and daily life, where it becomes genuinely difficult to understand where fiction ends and reality begins.

The mother, in all her roles, protector, loving presence, source of joy and hope, reveals a raw, authentic truth of humanity we have never seen before. The way she brings life into the world feels breathtaking, deeply human, and raw.

Nature plays a central role in the film, creating a world where human feelings and bodies exist in quiet harmony with the environment. This reaches its most powerful expression during her first birth. Red, particularly in her outfit, appears as a visual thread, marking her presence, her energy, and the intensity of life she brings. The costumes and language root the story firmly in its time, so precise and true that the world feels alive, immediate, and real.

““You defy venom, you defy air illness, you defy the horror that stalks the land.””

““You must pay attention to your dreams, Agnes. They will always guide you.””

““To live with our hearts open. To shut it not in the dark but to turn it to the sun.””

““Look at me””

What matters most is that beyond being deeply heartbreaking, it makes you understand courage, something that in the times we are living through feels very hard to find. It reminds you that family is the first thing, before everything else, before ambition, before the world outside. And it makes you realise that what we live, what we feel, is not something that happens to us from the outside, it comes from within.

““To be, or not to be, that is the question.””

The entire film focuses on William as a real human being, rather than emphasizing his fame or status as a playwright and poet. His presence is defined by absence, as he continually journeys to London in pursuit of a better future.

Max Richter’s composition works almost like a portal, instantly drawing the viewer into a space of relief and calm, a dimension where emotions flow freely and tears can finally emerge.

The film invites the viewer to move beyond the surface of loss, to enter the spaces it leaves behind, and to feel the hidden currents that shape grief. It is not only a story of absence but an exploration of what lingers, the quiet ways love and memory persist. 

You might think this film feels distant from COEVAL or out of context, yet it resonates deeply with our present, reflecting what it means to live in a contemporary world, where life matters more than ever. The real, lived version of ourselves becomes the key to everything we hope to create and lead.

Hamnet
2025
Directed by Chloé Zhao
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, Jacobi Jupe
Cinematography: Łukasz Żal
Music by Max Richter