At the 50th Toronto International Film Festival award ceremony, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet won the coveted People’s Choice Award. Since 1978, audience members pick the festival’s top prize by voting for their favorite film during the festival. Many of the winners, such as Zhao’s previous feature Nomadland, The King’s Speech, and 12 Years a Slave, have gone on to win the Best Picture Academy Award®. After Zhao’s acceptance speech mistakenly got turned upside down on the video screen, the CEO of TIFF, Cameron Bailey, said, “Apologies for the error, but that is what this film does to your heart,” reported The Wrap.
Adapted from the acclaimed novel by the author, Maggie O’Farrell, and Zhao, Hamnet tells a powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet, with Paul Mescal as the iconic playwright and Jessie Buckley as his wife. Reporting from Toronto, Rolling Stone wrote, “Hamnet is the most shattering movie of 2025.”
Hamnet is in theaters November 27.