#TIFF 2025 # Chloé Zhao # Hamnet # People’s Choice Award # Toronto International Film Festival # Jessie Buckley # Paul Mescal # Shakespeare # Maggie O’Farrell # Hamlet # UK cinema # Oscar race 2025 # festival winners
Toronto/CMEDIA: Hamnet, Academy Award–winning filmmaker Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed novel, has reportedly won the prestigious People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2025.
The UK-set film, starring Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare, was one of TIFF’s Gala presentations and quickly emerged as an audience favourite. The award, presented by Rogers, is considered a key indicator for the upcoming awards season, with previous winners often going on to garner critical and Oscar recognition.
Hamnet tells the story of Mescal and his family, as seen through the eyes of his thoughtful wife Agnes.
Expressing gratitude, Zhao accepted the top audience prize at Toronto via a video link and stressed the importance of making an audience connection with her work.
“I’d like to share that I was very lonely when I was young. And I wrote stories and I drew manga, and I put them on the Internet so that I could read the comments and the reactions of strangers. Whether they liked them or not, I felt connected to them, and suddenly the world is a little less of a lonely place and life seems to have more meaning,” the director recalled in her acceptance speech.
The theme of the film is grief but Chloe presents Hamnet not just a film about death. Early scenes of Agnes and Mescal’s courtship are naturalistic and contain joy alongside sorrow.
Chloé with her naturalistic and sensitive direction helps the heavy emotions take center stage.
A portrait of love, grief, and resilience, Hamnet reimagines Shakespeare’s family life and the profound impact of losing his only son. Zhao’s direction balances sorrow with moments of joy, presenting the legendary playwright not as a distant genius but as a husband and father deeply shaped by domestic life.
Critics have praised the performances of Buckley and Mescal, highlighting their on-screen chemistry in portraying the intimacy and fractures of a family confronting tragedy. Cinematographer Łukasz Żal and sound designer Johnnie Burn, supported by Max Richter’s score, have also drawn acclaim for creating an atmosphere of naturalism and emotional depth.
Agnes has a primitive characteristic and when her water breaks with her first child, she slips off into the woods to give birth alone and Mescal and his wife, Agnes, celebrate the birth of their son, Hamnet.
Mescal is a frustrated artist and needs to be among other professionals in London. Agnes understands this and encourages him to pursue his dreams.
But as Will’s career takes off in the city, she grows ever more reluctant to leave Stratford-upon-Avon. Still, their family life remains a happy one when he is home with their only son, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), who is particularly close to his dad, dreaming of working with him in the theater someday.
But it’s while he’s away that unthinkable tragedy occurs and Hamnet dies at a young age leaving both Agnes and Will heartbroken.
As Will heads back to London while the grief is still fresh, he tries to throw more and more of himself into his work.
Agnes retreats, unable to move on and bitter that he wasn’t there when she needed him most.
Chloe uses the context of a family tragedy to one of his most famous works and suggests that by this context readers can better understand Hamlet, considering that it was developed while he was mourning the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet.
The tragic loss of his only son at a young age inspired Shakespeare to write his timeless masterpiece “Hamlet”.
Bit by bit, however, Agnes begins to see how Will has expressed his grief through his play that transformed a tragedy into a meaningful masterpiece.
Born in Beijing, Chloé Zhao received a BA from Mount Holyoke College and an MFA in film production from NYU. Her films include Songs My Brothers Taught Me (15), which screened at TIFF Next Wave, and the Festival Official Selections The Rider (17) and Nomadland (20), which won that year’s People’s Choice Award. Hamnet (25) is her latest feature.
(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)
