There were only four days left of shooting on “Hamnet” when Chloé Zhao realized she didn’t have an ending. The filmmaker had led the cast through a week filming the pivotal climactic sequence inside the Globe Theatre, where William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) is staging his opus “Hamlet,” but something was missing. The script had Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), and her brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn) witnessing the demise of Hamlet (Noah Jupe), a denouement that should have evoked a sense of release. But even though the moment was meant to tie Shakespeare’s masterpiece to the still-fresh death of Will and Agnes’ 11-year-old son, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), neither Zhao nor Buckley could feel the necessary catharsis.

“Jessie and I avoided each other for the rest of the day because we both knew we had no film,” Zhao says. “We both went home feeling completely lost.”

“We were searching for this ending,” Buckley adds. “It was a daunting idea to try and pull together all the threads of the story we’d woven prior to this moment. I felt incredibly lost and a bit untethered.”

Zhao admits that she rarely preplans the endings of her films because she doesn’t tell stories linearly. She imagines the journey of her characters unfurling in a spiral, with the story extending downward into the darkness before rising back up.

“I’ve had to wait on every single film,” she says. “But this time I was going through the ending of a relationship, so I was terrified of losing love. I was holding on to it with dear life.”

The morning after they filmed the scripted ending, Buckley sent Zhao Max Richter’s “This Bitter Earth,” a reimagining of his song “On the Nature of Daylight” with lyrics. The filmmaker played it in the car on her way to the set.

“I could feel the tears and the heart opening, and then I started reaching my hand out towards the window,” Zhao remembers. “I was trying to touch the rain outside of the car. I looked at my hand and I realized that I needed to become one with something bigger than me so I would no longer be afraid of losing my love. Because love doesn’t die, it transforms. When we’re one with everything around us, it’s the illusion of separation that makes us so afraid of impermanence.”

The true culmination of “Hamnet” occurred to Zhao as she reached for the rain. If Agnes reached her hand toward the dying Hamlet, he could then rest and she could let go of her grief over losing Hamnet. And if the audience joined her, the sensation of release would be even greater.

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“The thing I didn’t expect, the surprise of it, was the absolute communal surrender,” Buckley says. “The way the fourth wall was broken between the play and the audience, the need to reach out and touch the core of the play. Agnes’ compass has always been touch.”

Although the specifics didn’t come to life until those final days, Zhao always planned the production so the Globe scenes would be done last. Production designer Fiona Crombie re-created the historic open-air theater on the backlot at England’s Elstree Studios using real timber brought in from France. The set version, which took 14 weeks to build, is smaller than the original Globe to create a sense of intimacy.

Plans for the building of the Globe Theatre set in “Hamnet.”

(Agata Grzybowska)

“This is my version,” Crombie says. “Our footprint is a bit smaller overall, but the essential architecture of the tiers and the roofline and the shape and everything is accurate. By virtue of having real beams that are scarred and aged, it feels more realistic. We wanted the whole thing to feel completely authentic. You want to smell these sets and feel these textures off the screen.”

“I told Fiona I wanted it to feel like the inside of a tree,” Zhao says. “So, spiritually, it’s correct for this story. And the play is accurate. We didn’t change any lines.”

Historically, there would not have been a backdrop onstage. But for the thematic purposes of “Hamnet,” a backdrop was essential. “There was a whole conversation about not just the aesthetic but the importance of that motif,” Crombie says. “It’s also a wall that separates Will from Agnes.”

“Hamnet’s” Globe was constructed to have a working backstage so Mescal, Jupe and the players could move in and out of the wings. There were real prop tables and makeup stations, as well as a nod to other Shakespeare plays. “We had a horse from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ that was loaned from the real Globe,” Crombie says. “There were loads of details everywhere that honored theater.”

The actors learned significant portions of “Hamlet.” Mescal led the cast of players in rehearsals before filming. “We would rehearse later in the evenings as an ongoing part of the process,” Mescal says. “Once the camera came in, it was Chloé’s baby, but we rehearsed consistently throughout the production. It was so cool. I have a lot of sympathy for directors. What I loved about it wasn’t necessarily the act of directing. It was more so the part of the process in helping me to act. It felt weird to direct them as Paul, but I could direct them as Will.”

Paul Mescal backstage at the Globe in “Hamnet.”

(Agata Grzybowska / Focus Features)

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Mescal and the players acted out 30 to 40 minutes of “Hamlet” while filming. The actor describes the feeling of being on the Globe stage as “sacred,” both because of the physical space and because of the emotional quality of the scenes.

“It felt very charged,” he says. “Up until that point we knew we had made something very special, but we were also acutely aware that this is where you had to land the plane. And that came with its own pressure. There’s something very special about playing Shakespeare and hearing Shakespeare’s words spoken in that place. The film is talking about the collision of art and humanity, and there are no greater words to communicate that feeling than the words in ‘Hamlet.’”

Zhao enlisted 300 extras to be the theater’s crowd. Each day, Zhao and Kim Gillingham, a dream coach who worked on the film, led the cast and extras in a daily meditation or dream exercise. It was unlike anything many of the actors had previously experienced.

“Everyone dropped into this very deep place of connection to themselves and to what was happening in front of them on the stage,” Alwyn says. “It was this amazing collective feeling of catharsis and connection to something bigger than ourselves.”

(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)

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“The performances from some of the supporting artists are extraordinary,” Mescal adds. “And that was intentional in terms of how Chloé constructed that feeling and by having Kim there.”

After Will notices Agnes in the audience, he goes backstage and finally breaks down, experiencing a long-awaited release of grief. Mescal prepared for the scene by listening to Bon Iver’s “Speyside.” Fittingly, it was the last thing he filmed.

“The play becomes something different because it’s being witnessed by Agnes,” Mescal says. “It comes alive for the audience because of this weird alchemy. Something feels different in the air. That moment felt like such relief, like he could just let go.”

“Hamnet” ends with Agnes reaching for Hamlet. In doing so, she gives herself permission to let her son go. It was a moment that had to be discovered rather than constructed.

“The scene became a holding of collective grief in a communal space where we were allowed to let it out,” Buckley says. “It was like a tsunami. I’ll never forget it.”

In Mescal’s mind, the film’s ending is really its beginning. He imagines the relationship between Will and Agnes will go on, continuing the spiral.

“I have no idea how a relationship survives the death of a child, but I do think there is a miraculous hope and they can see each other again in that moment,” Mescal says. “They’ve abandoned each other in certain moments, but now she understands where he went. And I think they will return to each other.”

(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)

Selected by Tajikistan but ultimately not accepted by the Academy to compete in the Oscar international feature category, “Black Rabbit, White Rabbit” begins ambitiously, with a famous quote from playwright Anton Chekhov about setups and payoffs — about how if a gun is established in a story, it must go off. Moments later, an inviting long take involving a young man selling an antique rifle ends in farcical tragedy, signaling an equally farcical series of events that grow stranger and stranger. The film, by Iranian director Shahram Mokri, folds in on itself in intriguing (albeit protracted) ways, warping its meta-fictional boundaries until they supersede its characters, or any underlying meaning.

Still, it’s a not-altogether-uninteresting exercise in exploring the contours of storytelling, told through numerous thematically interconnected vignettes. The opening Chekhov quote, though it might draw one’s attention to minor details that end up insignificant, ensures a heightened awareness of the movie’s artifice, until the film eventually pulls back and becomes a tale of its own making. But en route to this semi-successful postmodern flourish, its character drama is enticing enough on its own, with hints of magical realism. It begins with the tale of a badly injured upper-class woman, Sara (Hasti Mohammai), discovering that her car accident has left her with the ability to communicate with household objects.

Sara’s bandages need changing, and the stench of her ointment becomes a quick window into her relationships. Her distant husband rejects her; her boisterous stepdaughter is more frank, but ultimately accepting; her gardener and handyman stays as diplomatic as he can. However, the film soon turns the gunfire payoff in its prologue into a broader setup of its own, as a delivery man shows up at Sara’s gate, insisting that she accept delivery for an object “the deceased man” has paid for.

Mokri eventually returns to this story (through a slightly tilt-shifted lens), but not before swerving headfirst into a seemingly unrelated saga of extras on a film set and a superstitious prop master, Babak (Babak Karimi), working on a shot-for-shot remake of an Iranian classic. A mix of rapid-fire Tajik, Persian and Russian dialogue creates dilemma upon dilemma when Babak’s ID goes missing, preventing him from being able to thoroughly check the prop ammunition for an assassination scene.

Danger begins to loom — a recent Alec Baldwin case even warrants a mention on-screen — as the notion of faulty firearms yanks Chekhov’s wisdom front and center once more, transforming it from a writing tip into a phantasmagorical inevitability. In keeping with the previous story, the props even communicate with each other (through subtitles) and begin gossiping about what might come to pass.

After establishing these narrative parameters through unbroken, fluid shots filmed at a sardonic distance, Mokri soon begins playing mischievous temporal games. He finds worthwhile excuses to revisit scenes from either different angles or with a slightly altered aesthetic approach — with more proximity and intimacy — in order to highlight new elements of his mise-en-scène. What’s “real” and “fictional,” even within the movie’s visual parlance, begins to blur in surreal ways, largely pivoting around Babak simply trying to do his job. However, the more this tale engorges through melodic, snaking takes, the more it circles around a central point, rather than approaching it.

The film’s own expanse becomes philosophically limiting, even though it remains an object of curiosity. When it’s all said and done, the playfulness on display in “Black Rabbit, White Rabbit” is quite remarkable, even if the story’s contorting framework seldom amounts to much, beyond drawing attention to itself. It’s cinema about cinema in a manner that, on one hand, lives on the surface, but on the other hand, invites you to explore its texture in ways few other movies do.

Abraham Quintanilla, father and manager of the late Tejano pop icon Selena Quintanilla, has died. He was 86.

“It’s with a heavy heart to let you guys know that my Dad passed away today,” Quintanilla’s son, A.B. Quintanilla III, wrote on his Instagram account on Saturday. The cause of death has not been disclosed to the public.

As patriarch of the famous Mexican American music family, Quintanilla played a critical role in the development of his daughter Selena’s career. After her tragic death in 1995, he dedicated his life to safeguarding her legacy and overseeing primary control over her estate. This included managing the rights to her image, name and likeness — at times, to controversial ends.

Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1939, Quintanilla began his music career as a member of the singing group the Dinos in 1956, a Chicano rock group that was met with racial discrimination. In one instance, a club owner paid the group not to perform after realizing they were Mexican American youth; but the group was also sidelined by its Mexican counterparts for not making Spanish-language music.

Quintanilla’s exasperation informed a real quote that was later made famous by actor Edward James Olmos, who played Quintanilla in the 1997 “Selena” biopic: “We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, both at the same time. It’s exhausting!”

Quintanilla would eventually step away from the group in the 1960s to start a family with Marcella Samora, whom he met in Tacoma, Wash., while serving in the U.S. Air Force. The family quickly grew following the births of A.B., Suzette and Selena. In them, he saw the potential to fulfill his own dreams of musical stardom.

With A.B. on bass, Suzette on drums and Selena as the tender vocalist, the trio would often perform at the family restaurant, PapaGayo’s, which later closed following the 1981 recession. The family was forced to sell their home in Lake Jackson, Texas, and move to Corpus Christi. In order to make ends meet, Selena y Los Dinos would perform on street corners, family parties and other social functions. Under the guidance of their father, who assumed the position of band manager, Los Dinos eventually signed with Freddie Records in 1984.

Selena was met with much skepticism from an early age as a young girl in a male-dominated genre, including by their first label head, Freddie Martinez. Still, Los Dinos persevered in the Tejano music scene, hopping from label to label before the group finally released eight albums under Manny Guerra’s independent labels, GP Productions and Record Producer Productions. With multiple albums under her belt, Selena was then able to dominate the Tejano Music Awards; she won the title of Female Vocalist of the Year in 1987.

Selena eventually caught the attention of Jose Behar, the former head of Sony Music Latin, who saw her crossover appeal — despite Selena’s primary language being English — and signed her to EMI Latin (Capitol Records) in 1989. This led to the release of her most career-defining hits across five albums, such as “Como la Flor,” “Amor Prohibido,” “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” and the posthumously released ballad, “Dreaming of You.”

Following Selena’s murder in 1995 — by Yolanda Saldivar, the former president of her fan club — Quintanilla became a fierce protector of her image, which was often sensationalized by the public.

Because of the grisly and highly publicized nature of Selena’s death, Quintanilla felt that the film needed to be made sooner than later, in order to do justice to his daughter’s legacy, said “Selena” director Gregory Nava in a 2025 interview with De Los.

“For me, as a filmmaker, I wanted to really tell a true story,” said Nava. “I had conflict, not really with the family, but with Abraham. Her father was very protective of her.”

Tensions flared most when Nava began to shape the story of the singer’s elopement with guitarist Chris Perez, whom she married in 1992.

“You can’t put on the screen that it’s right for a young girl to disobey her father,” Nava recalled Quintanilla saying.

“Isn’t it a more important point to make that she is doing what she knows is right? And [that] she’s doing the right thing because she knows she loves Chris and Chris loves her?” Nava responded.

Eventually, Quintanilla relented. “I guess if I have to look bad to make Selena look good, I’ll do it,” Nava recalled him saying. “He has a soft heart. He finally saw that was the right thing to do, but it took hours of heated discussion.”

Although Suzette has said that the 1997 biopic came too soon in her eyes — and prompted criticism of her father, who some viewed as money-hungry and opportunistic — she ultimately stood by his decision, stating that there was a pressure within the family to control the narrative at the time.

Nava agreed.

“Abraham was very wise in pushing it through quickly,” he said. “Selena brought us all together, and it cemented her legacy in a positive way. All the negativity was dispelled by that movie. You see that in the film and you feel it.”