‘Hamnet’ wins Audience Award at Toronto International Film Festival

Chloe Zhao's Hamnet bagged top People's Choice award at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival.

The two-time Academy Award winner adapted Maggie O'Farrell's novel of the name, following a fictionalised story of Shakespeare and his wife as they fall in love and the tragedy they face on the death of their son, Hamnet, who died at the age of 11.

The film stars Paul Mescal as the iconic literary writer and Jessie Buckley as his wife, Agnes.

While accepting the top audience award in the Canadian city via a video link, she expressed gratitude 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."

The director continued, "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 first runner up for the top audience prize was Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, an adaptation of the classic Mary Shelley novel, while the second runner-up was Rian Johnson's Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.

Hamnet is opening for limited release in USA on November 27, it is set for worldwide premiere on December 12.