AceShowbiz - Oscar Isaac and his wife, director Elvira Lind, unveiled their documentary King Hamlet on Wednesday evening at the 23rd Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX). The film’s international premiere was followed by an engaging Q&A session with the Copenhagen audience, many of whom were friends and family.

King Hamlet is a deeply personal documentary that Lind began filming a decade ago. It chronicles Isaac’s intense journey as he prepares to play the title role in Shakespeare’s Hamlet at New York’s Public Theater. The film captures the actor’s emotional and professional struggles as he balances the demands of this challenging role with significant life events, including the anticipation of his first child and the grief over his mother’s recent passing.

The documentary is produced by Sara Stockmann and Sofia Sondervan, alongside Lind and Isaac’s Mad Gene Media, Sonntag Pictures, and Dutch Tilt Film. At the premiere, CPH:DOX quoted Lind reflecting on the project: “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.” She added that Isaac’s immersion into his work was precisely what she aimed to document — “it was the dance I dreamed of.”

After the warm reception, Lind expressed heartfelt appreciation for sharing the film in Denmark. “It's so amazing to take this film to Denmark and share with everyone here where the film was made, and I was made, too,” she said, visibly moved.

The project began modestly, with Lind initially intending to capture only her then-boyfriend’s theater workshop. “I thought I would simply film the rehearsal process,” she recalled. Isaac joked to the audience that the footage was never meant to be anything other than private, quipping, “Not those kinds of films,” to laughter. He also acknowledged that much of the documentary’s candidness stems from Lind’s discreet camera work. “She's kind of a ninja,” he said. “She can be quite invisible. She's like a nature photographer — she doesn't spook the elk while filming, or the cheetahs.”

Despite the intimacy of the footage, gaining access was not always straightforward. The rehearsal space imposed limitations, and Lind was also balancing the demands of filming with caring for a newborn child. “Me with a baby just maybe didn't feel like what they needed,” she admitted during the screening. At home, Isaac was not always ready for the camera either. “Oh no, not now,” he recalled responding when she approached him with the camera after a long day. “But that’s part of the tension of the film,” he added, underscoring the natural push and pull captured on screen.

The film also intimately features the couple’s son Eugene, both in the womb and as a baby, who was present at the premiere. Isaac compared King Hamlet to a documentary on a band recording an album, emphasizing how the film reveals the ensemble coming together. “You really see this group come together,” he said.

For Isaac, the documentary preserves moments that are fleeting and deeply personal. He described it as capturing the “unglamorous” reality of theater and the unique, often strange nature of live performance. “It does feel like you get to see how unglamorous it can be, and what a weird thing it is, particularly theater,” he said. Calling the film “a miracle,” he reflected on how it holds the “fluidity of the moment” — a moment that inevitably disappears. He also noted that some individuals featured in the film, including his family members, are no longer alive.

Watching himself on screen after ten years, Isaac was struck by how much has changed in his perspective. The documentary shows him explaining that after his mother’s death, the only thing that helped him cope was focusing on the play. “Now I would say to that person: 'Don't get out of your sorrow. You don't have to escape it. And there is no escaping it,'” he reflected.

For Lind, documenting her husband’s process was a profound learning experience. “I had no idea what it took,” she said. “Seeing him go through it was really intense.”

Isaac described acting not as impersonation but as “a condensing of myself.” The film ultimately explores the challenge of confronting one’s own ego and vulnerability in the creative process. “We are watching someone on a tightrope with their own ego and their own feelings of humiliation, and do they overcome it or not and how?” he said.

Looking ahead, Lind is developing a fiction project but remains passionate about documentaries, which she calls “my first love.” Meanwhile, Isaac is not in a hurry to return to the stage, acknowledging that theater is “all-consuming.” He said that when he does return, it might be for a one-act play rather than a full production.