Set in late 16th-century England, the story begins with the courtship between young William Shakespeare, a struggling Latin tutor, and Agnes Hathaway, a mysterious, intuitive woman rumored to possess healing powers. Their romance defies convention, leading to marriage and the birth of their children: Susanna and the twins Hamnet and Judith.

With William increasingly working in London, Agnes cares for their children at home. When 11-year-old son Hamnet dies from the plague, his parents are torn apart. Agnes descends into grief, haunted by guilt and memory. William, buried in work, channels his anguish into art—eventually transforming his son's name and loss into his masterpiece, Hamlet. 

The cast (including the amazing young Jacobi Jupe) is uniformly terrific with Buckley anchoring the film's raw emotional depth. Zhao's adaptation is a meditative, visually poetic study of grief, motherhood and creation. It portrays loss not as an endpoint, but as the source of human connection and art.
 
D: Chloé Zhao, UK, 2025, 2h5m, Closed Captions