Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley brought Chloé Zhao's Hamnet, her adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel of Shakespeare's family, to the BFI London Film Festival's Mayor of London's Gala.
Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet had its UK premiere as the Mayor of London’s Gala at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Saturday 11 October 2025. Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, its William and Agnes Shakespeare, joined her on the carpet.
Zhao, the director of Nomadland, was the second woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director. She wrote Hamnet with Maggie O’Farrell from O’Farrell’s 2020 novel.
The film follows Agnes as she and Shakespeare struggle with the death of their eleven-year-old son, a grief Shakespeare turns into Hamlet. Emily Watson and Joe Alwyn are also in the cast.
Hamnet had its world premiere at Telluride in August. Universal released it in British cinemas on 9 January 2026.
Mescal was born in Dublin in 1996 and trained at the Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin. Normal People won him a BAFTA in 2020, and his Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire won the Olivier Award.
Buckley came to attention as the runner-up in a BBC talent show in 2008, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and broke through in Wild Rose.