Maggie O'Farrell's lauded 2020 novel Hamnet is a dense and lyrical imagining of the lives of William Shakespeare's family, full of interior thought and lush descriptions of the physical world. It would seem, upon reading, near impossible to adapt into a film. Or, at least, a film worthy of O'Farrell's so finely woven sensory spell. Film-maker Chloe Zhao has attempted to do so anyway, and the result is a stately, occasionally lugubrious drama whose closing minutes are among the most poignant in recent memory.
Writer/director James Sweeney's "Twinless" took the 2025 Sundance Film Festival by storm. This mordant delight - about two young men who befriend one another in a support group for people who've lost a twin - whipped the Eccles theater into a frenzy with its cuttingly dark laughs and unexpected plot twists. Sweeney's second feature, in which he stars opposite Dylan O'Brien who plays twins Rocky and Roman, also made headlines when sex scenes involving the two actors were leaked online by social media users
Beneath a china cabinet in Meshea Ingram's Georgia home rests a single yellow alphabet block, a simple but symbolic reminder of her late son, Briggs. "He was my sunshine," Ingram recalls, the vivid memories of his bright blonde hair and affectionate hugs lingering in her heart. The block remains untouched, a poignant testament to her love and loss, encapsulating the sentiment that "some things stay right where they are, not because we forgot to move them, but because our hearts never will."