TIFF People’s Choice Award Winner Hamnet, Cannes-decorated The Secret Agent and afterlife romcom Eternity have settled into theaters for the Thanksgiving frame with Friday set to usher in another wave — from Benedict Cumberbatch in The Thing With Feathers and smaller indies like buzzy Sundance documentaries BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions and Teenage Wasteland, a tribute to late songwriter John Prine, and Venice-premiering The Tale of Silyan. It’s crowded out there with Zootopia 2 and Wicked: For Good.
Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet from Focus Features, winner of the TIFF People’s Choice Award and the Audience Award at BFI London, is playing 100 locations ahead of a moderate expansion December 5. Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s New York Times best-selling novel, Oscar-winner Zhao co-wrote the screen adaptation with O’Farrell and served as co-editor of the film. Stars Jessie Buckley as Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, and Paul Mescal as The Bard in a story of love and loss that sees Shakespeare channel his grief at the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet, into the creation of his most famous play, Hamlet. In his day, the two names were interchangeable. It’s a rare look at Shakespeare as a flesh and blood person whose literary genius and domestic life were intertwined. Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh at 87%. See Deadline’s review, where, says Pete Hammond, the “two stars and director achieving new heights of their talents, knocked me out.”
Leading up to the film’s release, Focus hosted a Book Crawl across four beloved LA independent bookstores where new readers and longtime fans turned out to meet O’Farrell and the new film edition of the novel, including at a standing-room-only Q&A with Zhao moderated by Dennis Lehane. The distributor also partnered with The Main Street Flower Truck and Brownstone Botanical for surprise flower truck pop-ups in LA and NYC offering Hamnet-inspirited bouquets and custom stationary.
Neon’s The Secret Agent from writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho opened in limited release in New York at Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Angelika. The Brazilian political thriller was the most awarded film at Cannes this year where it premiered in Competition, winning Best Director, Best Actor for star Wagner Moura, and the FIPRESCI International Film Critics Award. Brazil’s official Oscar submission also screened at Telluride, TIFF and the New York Film Festival with Moura collecting awards at Zurich (Golden Eye), Chicago (Best Actor) and Newport Beach (Best Actor). The film is nominated for Gotham Awards for Best Lead Performance for Moura and Best Original Screenplay; shortlisted at the Critics Choice Awards for Best Casting/Ensemble and Best Costumes; and nominated for Best International Film at the British Independent Film Awards. It’s RT Certified Fresh at 99%, and 87% on Metacritic (Must-See), Deadline review here.
Set in 1977 Brazil during the country’s military dictatorship, Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run. Hoping to reunite with his son, he travels to Recife during Carnival but soon realizes that the city is far from the safe haven he was expecting.
Expands to LA Dec. 5 with AMC Century City hosting Q&As with Moura and Filho, followed by a slow rollout through December.
A24 romantic comedy Eternity by David Freyne, written with Pat Cunnane, opens on just under 1,500 screens. Premiered at TIFF, see Deadline review. Stars Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen and Callum Turner in an afterlife love triangle where souls have one week to decide where, and with whom, to spend eternity. Joan (Olsen) is faced with the impossible choice between the man she spent her life with (Teller) and her first love (Turner), who died young and has waited decades for her to arrive.
With Da’Vine Joy Randolph, John Early and Olga Merediz. Eternity was at the top of films ever tested by A24, which held regional word-of-mouth screenings across the country in partnership with organizations from AARP to Bucketlisters and TripAdvisor.
Starting Friday: Briarcliff Entertainment will release drama-horror The Thing With Feathers at 400 theaters. The debut narrative film by Dylan Southern, an adaptation of the Max Porter novella Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, premiered at Sundance and Berlin (see Deadline review). It stars Benedict Cumberbatch, alongside Richard Boxall and Henry Boxall, as a widower left to raise two young sons after the unexpected death of his wife. He finds his life is unraveling from grief, which takes the form of a unwanted houseguest — a man-like crow (voiced by David Thewlis) seemingly brought to life from the father’s work as an illustrator — that taunts him from the shadows.
Picturehouse will debut documentary The Tale of Silyan, North Macedonia’s Venice and TIFF-premiering submission for International Feature, at the IFC Center in New York. Q&As Friday and Saturday with director Tamara Kotevska (Honeyland) and cinematographer Jean Dakar. The story of a white stork, Silyan, and a farmer, Nikola, whose lives intertwine when Nikola, abandoned by his family, saves the injured bird from a landfill. As man and bird bond, they find solace and companionship in each other’s solitude. At 100% on RT off 21 reviews. Concordia Studio’s Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) is a producer. Expands to two screens in LA next weekend and another 15 on Dec. 12.
Documentary Teenage Wasteland opens at the Film Forum in New York. The theater booked directly with the filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine (Boys State, Girls State). A high school assignment goes full-on activist when English teacher Fred Isseks sends students, armed with video recorders, on an investigative assignment to suss out the brown muck surfacing at the local dump in their upstate New York town. The toxicity they discover lives not only in the landfill, but in political corruption and environmental injustice in their community. Thirty years later, they revisit their film and confront the legacy of this transformative experience in the doc that includes archival footage of their 1996 class project, Garbage, Gangsters, and Greed, outtakes, diaries, and interviews. At 100% on RT off 26 reviews. Premiered at Sundance under its previous Middletown.
Watermelon Pictures has set early access weekend screenings of TIFF-premiering historical drama Palestine 36 at about 50 locations this weekend timed to International Solidarity Day with the Palestinian People on Saturday (and ahead of shortlist voting Dec. 8). Written and directed by Annemarie Jacir, the film is set in 1936 Palestine as villages rise against British colonial rule. Stars Karim Daoud Anaya as Yusuf, a young man from the countryside working as a chauffeur in Jerusalem who longs for a future beyond the growing unrest. But with rising numbers of Jewish immigrants escaping antisemitism in Europe, and the Palestinian population uniting in the largest and longest uprising against Britain’s 30-year dominion, all sides spiral towards inevitable collision. With Jeremy Irons as British High Commissioner Sir Arthur Wauchope. At 100% with RT critics on 24 reviews.
Rich Spirit debuts Sundance and Berlin-premiering BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, the debut feature from artist and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, at nine locations including the Lumiere Cinema in LA and IFC in New York through Dec. 3. Adapted from his renowned video art installation from the 2019 Venice Biennale, the film (at 100% on RT off 17 reviews) is described as “a distinctive cinematic experience that mirrors the sonic textures of a record album, weaving fiction and history in an immersive journey where the fictionalized figures of W. E. B Du Bois and Marcus Garvey join artists, musicians, Joseph’s family, and even Twitter chats, in a vision for black consciousness.” Beyond installation works, Joseph, is known for music videos for Kendrick Lamar, Sampha, Flying Lotus, Beyoncé and others.
Aftershock: The Nicole Bell Story from Faith Media Distribution opens on about 200 screens. In a tragic incident that sparked national outrage, unarmed 23-year-old Sean Bell was fatally shot by undercover NYPD officers just hours before his wedding. The barrage of 50 bullets that ended his life became a defining moment in the fight for police accountability and reform. Told through the eyes of his fiancée Nicole Paultre Bell, the film chronicles her determination to transform unimaginable pain into purpose and a call for change. The directorial debut of Alesia “Z” Glidewell, who wrote the screenplay with Cas Sigers, stars Rayven Ferrell as Nicole Paultre Bell, Bentley Green as Sean Bell and Richard Lawson as Al Sharpton.
Abramorama will play You Got Gold: A Celebration Of John Prine, a tribute concert film honoring the late songwriter, at the Quad in NYC including a Q&A Saturday with Prine’s widow and producer on the project, Fiona Whelan Prine. Director Michael John Warren melds an October 2022 tribute concert at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium honoring Prine’s legacy with performances and behind-the-scenes stories with family, friends, and artists Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Tyler Childers, Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam, Jason Isbell and Bob Weir to celebrate his life and music. Prine passed away in 2020 due to complications from Covid-19.