One of the most striking part of the 27th Ankara International Film Festival, the Hamlet selection “There are Rotten Things in the Earth”, includes very special screenings with 6 films from 6 different countries. The Hamlet theater performance, staged in London Barbican Center by Benedict Cumberbatch, who is known by the Sherlock series, will able to be watched from the white screen.

[gallery link="file" ids="5157,5156,5155"]

National Theatre, which is one of the most important theatres of England, realized the project called “National Theatre Live” in the year 2009, which makes it possible for productions to be screened “live” in the movie theatres within London. With first 70 screenings in England, then more than a thousand screenings on the movie theatres, the theatrical productions performed on the most important theatres of London and sold-out plays of Broadway reached millions of viewers. The recordings of National Theatre Live are being realized by the cameras placed on the best seats of the theatre in which the play is being performed. Because the shootings are made during the play, they are called “live”.

Last year’s Best Actor Nominee for Oscars with the film “The Imitation Game’, English actor Cumberbatch’s “Hamlet” performance recorded within the scope of National Theatre Live’s project will be able to meet the audience during the festival. The tickets for Hamlet, which was produced by Sonia Friedman Productions and directed by Lyndsey Turner, were sold out a year in advance. The tickets for this special screening that will take place in Büyülü Fener will be on sale for 40 TL (full price) and 30 TL (discounted). The screening will be in English with Turkish subtitles.

6 HAMLET ADAPTATIONS FROM 6 COUNTRIES

The first film in the compilation is Laurence Olivier’s cult Hamlet adaptation from 1948. Olivier’s directing and acting skillfully represents an individual who cannot cope with his loss. Castle Elsinore transforms into a separate character through the camera of cinematographer Desmond Dickinson.

Claude Chabrol’s Ophélia that came up in 1963 depicts Yvan’s imaginary world, inspired by Hamlet, blaming his mother and uncle for his father’s death. Chabrol, known for his appreciation for Hitchcock, adapts Hamlet to the France of the 60’s by creating a tense atmosphere reflecting the problem of confrontation encountered in the text to petty bourgeois and nuclear family.

[gallery link="file" ids="4774,4783,4778"]

Based on Ivo Brešan’s play of the same name, competed for the Golden Bear in Berlinale in 1973, Acting Hamlet in the Village of Mrduša Donja, by Yugoslav black wave movement’s significant director Krsto Papić, is among the Hamlets, that clashes with the power in a way both cynical and yet at the same time anxious, while looking for the truth.

In Hamlet Goes Business, Aki Kaurismäki tailors Hamlet to the present day as the successor of an industrial giant producing plastic ducks. While doing so, Kaurismäki uses the class conflicts and blends it with the northern surreal humor. The director mocks everything in the story including Hamlet himself, with his non-stop rage. Kaurismäki’s Hamlet is a satiric interpretation of the act of legitimization of violence by the oppressed.

[gallery link="file" ids="4780,4795,5154"]

Directed by the extraordinary director, actor and scriptwriter, late Peter Kern, German theatre scene’s genius wild kid Christoph Schlingensief’s Hamlet – This is Your Family, documents the staging of the Hamlet by the neo-Nazi youth in the country, to criticize the apathetic behavior of Switzerland against the rising racism and extreme rightist movements in the country.

1976 production of Metin Erksan, The Angel of Vengeance: The Female Hamlet can also be viewed within the selection. The film, starring Fatma Girik who also produced the film alongside Memduh Ün, was nominated for a Golden Prize in Moscow International Film Festival. Film, in which Girik overcame this unusual role professionally, became one of the cult pieces of Turkish cinema.

Loft Incek is the section sponsor of the Hamlet Selection. British Council is also one of the supporters of this section with the worldwide program Shakespeare Lives, consisting of events and activities celebrating the works world’s most famous playwright on the 400th year of his death in the year 2016.