Chloé Zhao’s ‘Hamnet’ to Open 48th Mill Valley Film Festival, Star Jessie Buckley to Receive MVFF Award
Hot off its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival last week, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet is set to open the 48th Mill Valley Film Festival on October 2 with Academy Award-nominated star Jessie Buckley set to receive the Mill Valley Film Festival Award for her performance in the movie and her contributions to contemporary cinema. The 48th Mill Valley Film Festival runs October 2-12.
Chloé Zhao’s fifth feature, which also stars Academy Award nominee Paul Mescal, will screen as the opening night film on October 2. This follows last year’s main Focus Features fall title Conclave as the opener of the fest. Both Zhao and Buckley will participate in an onstage conversation following the film’s screening.
Hamnet will also screen during an encore presentation the next day, where Buckley will receive the award After the award presentation, outgoing MVFF program director Zoë Elton will moderate an onstage conversation between Zhao and Buckley.
The film follows the largely untold love story and tragedy that inspired William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, with Mescal as the playwright and Buckley as wife Agnes Shakespeare, who historically we know as Anne Hathaway. Focus Features will release Hamnet in select theaters November 27 before its wide release December 12 after its festival appearances that also include Toronto and London. Zhao directed Hamnet from a script she co-wrote with Maggie O’Farrell, based on O’Farrell’s celebrated 2020 novel.
In her review of the film out of Telluride, AwardsWatch’s Sophia Cimenello said “Hamnet is as sensitive as a whisper and as confident as a soliloquy, breathing new life into Shakespeare’s tragic masterpiece.”
“It was 2020, during the height of the pandemic, and I’ll never forget the excitement at the drive-in we created for that year’s Mill Valley Film Festival. One of the special programs at the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Marin County Civic Center featured Chloé Zhao’s then-new film, and the anticipation was palpable,” MVFF director and founder Mark Fishkin says in a statement. “It’s been five years since Nomadland went on to win three Academy Awards, including best picture. Now, five years later, Zhao returns with Hamnet, a film that exceeds those high expectations. Poignant and powerful, this adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel will captivate her readers and anyone unfamiliar with the story alike.”
Zhao won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director for 2020’s Nomadland and is also known for her features The Rider and Eternals. Buckley was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in 2021’s The Lost Daughter and has also appeared in Wild Rose, the Oscar-winning Women Talking and I’m Thinking of Ending Things.
Adds Elton, “I’m so excited to be opening this year’s MVFF with Hamnet. It’s like being in the company of great artists across time, from the imagined lives of Agnes Hathaway and William Shakespeare in 16th-century England via Maggie O’Farrell’s excellent book, to Chloé Zhao’s exquisite filmmaking and the extraordinary performances of Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, plus a wonderful ensemble. The story and characters feel remarkably contemporary, a testament to the power of the actor-director collaboration. From the woods of rural England to the boards of The Globe Theatre, it’s beautiful work!”
Fishkin concurs, “We are proud to present Hamnet as our Opening Night film for MVFF48. It is a film that will spark many conversations throughout awards season.”
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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