Meet Oscar Isaac and Elvira Lind at King Hamlet screenings during CPH:DOX
Danish documentary filmmaker Elvira Lind returns with a deeply personal portrait of her husband, actor Oscar Isaac, who is facing the most difficult role of his life. King Hamlet premieres at CPH:DOX on March 18 at Empire at 19:15 at Empire with both Elvira Lind and Oscar Isaac in attendance. They will also participate in a talk in Grand Teatret on March 19 at 19.00 with Paprika Steen and Lars Mikkelsen, among others, moderated by Lærke Kløvedal.
Thursday 12th Mar 2026
Actor Oscar Isaac is set to play Hamlet at New York’s Public Theater. But at the same time, his life off stage is also in a dramatic act. He is expecting his first child with his wife and the film’s director, documentary filmmaker Elvira Lind (‘Bobbi Jene’, 2017), at a time when he has just lost his mother. Sorrow and joy break like waves in Lind’s dramatic and deeply personal film about the process leading up to the premiere of Shakespeare’s classic. It begins as an actor’s process, but develops into a meditation on love, life, and the porous boundary between performance and private life.
Meet Elvira Lind and Oscar Isaac
King Hamlet
Filmmaker Elvira Linds returns with a deeply personal portrait of her husband, actor Oscar Isaac, who is facing the most difficult role of his life.
Elvira Lind / United States & Denmark / 2025 / International Premiere
Elvira Lind says: “When I started filming this project, it wasn’t so much Shakespeare’s text about grief and revenge that interested me, but how Oscar would crawl under Hamlet’s skin and live there for a period of time, losing himself in it. Oscar likes to delve deeply into his work and allow himself to disappear completely into the process, and that was exactly what I wanted to document—it was the dance I dreamed of.
Oscar’s mother’s sudden death in the middle of the process was a shock and a heavy burden for him to bear, and his grief became inextricably intertwined with his work on the play. At the same time, we were suddenly in the middle of filming, about to become parents for the first time, and I worried about how the intensity of Shakespeare’s obsession and life at the theater would affect our private life together. And how would motherhood and the new limitations affect me as a filmmaker?”
With ‘King Hamlet’, Elvira Lind continues her acclaimed exploration of the intersection between art and life, but this time with the camera focused on her own family. A film created with a rare intimacy and raw, emotional honesty – and with sky-high expectations for the art itself. The film had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in 2025.
Elvira Lind previously directed the Oscar-nominated short fiction film ‘The Letter Room’ (2020) as well as the documentaries ‘Songs for Alexis’ (2014), ‘Bobbi Jene’ (2017) and now ‘King Hamlet’ (2025). In all three documentaries, the audience is invited into the artists’ creative workshops, where the participants courageously and confidently allow the audience to witness how art takes shape.
‘King Hamlet’ is produced by Danish Sara Stockmann, Sonntag Pictures, Mad Gene Media, and Dutch Tilt (New York).