No sooner have we been applauding one movie that tackles grief, another comes along and blows you away
Just like 'Hamnet,' Philippa Lowthorpe's 'H is for Hawk' is a gripping watch.
An adaptation of naturalist Helen MacDonald's prizewinning 2014 memoir about how training a goshawk helped her process the shocking death of her father, it's a piercingly honest meditation on life and loss and the wonder of nature.
Adapted for the screen by the Irish novelist Emma Donoghue, it stars Claire Foy as the Cambridge academic whose love of birds was instilled at an early age by her dad, Brendan Gleeson's Alisdair, an accomplished press photographer.
Plunged into grief when Alisdair dies from a heart attack at the age of 71, Helen rapidly becomes obsessed with the notion of raising a goshawk despite never having trained a bird of that size.
With the help of Sam Spruell's falconer Stuart, she sources a bird and drives to Stranraer with her Australian friend, Denise Gough's Christina to purchase one from Sean Kearns' gruff Northern Irish breeder.
As she trains all her focus on the bird who she calls Mabel, Christina and her family become increasingly concerned at how disassociated Helen is becoming from the rest of her life.
Her home is a mess, full of unwashed plates and rotting raw meat in the kitchen.
She misses lectures and sails perilously close to becoming a recluse.
As the film progresses, the question it poses is: is Helen's obsession with Mabel a help or a hindrance?
'H is for Hawk' is a sensitively written, subtly directed and superbly acted movie that honestly portrays the messiness of life.
Helen is upended by the sudden death of a father she idolised and she flounders in the face of grief.
Lowthorpe and Donohue do an excellent job in capturing how grief can suddenly creep up on you in the months following a loss.
But it also shows how it can envelop someone.
The film captures those sudden flashes of memories that can surface but it also conjures up images that convey the sense of emptiness.
Foy is more than up to the task of depicting Helen's grief, turning in a performance that is every bit as impressive and insightful as Jessie Buckley's in 'Hamnet' - even if it is much more subdued.
It helps that she has Gleeson as a foil in the flashback sequences who turns in a generous and warm supporting performance.
Not only do they convince as father and daughter but Spruell and Gough are effective too as friends trying to help Foy's character come to terms with her loss
Lindsay Duncan and Josh Dylan as Helen's mum and brother James are also superb as family members who become increasingly concerned by her increasingly eccentric, reclusive behaviour.
Danish cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christiansen's unobtrusive approach strikes the perfect tone for a film that benefits from the assured pace set by Lowthorpe and her editor Nico Leunen.
All of this makes 'H is for Hawk' a wonderful winter's watch.
In fact, it is so good you leave the cinema thinking it would make a wonderful double bill with Ken Loach's classic 'Kes'.
'H is for Hawk' is also a great example of how Film 4, in particular, has contributed so much to British cinema - delivering grown up movies that understand the medium and never underestimate their audience's intelligence.
Long may Film 4 continue to enrich the cinematic landscape and fund movies that really matter.
('H is for Hawk' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on January 23, 2026)
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