TIFF Movie “H is for Hawk”
Saturday May 16, 2026 – 4 pm – Orpheum Theatre
Cost: $10.00
H Is for Hawk is a 2025 biographical drama film directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, who co-wrote the screenplay with Emma Donoghue, based on the 2014 memoir by naturalist Helen MacDonald. It stars Claire Foy, Brendan Gleeson, Denise Gough, Sam Spruell, and Lindsay Duncan. The film tells the true story of Helen MacDonald who tends to a goshawk after the death of their father Alisdair. The film received generally positive reviews from critics.
Plot
H Is for Hawk chronicles Helen Macdonald’s experience of grief following the sudden death of their father and their decision to train a goshawk as a means of coping with that loss. The narrative interweaves two strands: Macdonald’s personal bereavement and the practical and psychological challenges of falconry.
After their father’s death, Macdonald retreats from their previous academic and social life and immerses themself in the demanding discipline of hawk training. They acquire a female goshawk, named Mabel, and devotes themself to the meticulous routines required to tame and hunt with the bird. The process is portrayed as both physically exhausting and emotionally consuming, drawing Macdonald into an intense, solitary relationship with the hawk and the wild instincts it embodies.
As Macdonald becomes increasingly absorbed in falconry, they describe a gradual withdrawal from ordinary human concerns, seeking refuge in the clarity and harshness of the natural world. This immersion brings moments of exhilaration and communion with nature, but also exposes the limits and dangers of attempting to escape grief by erasing one’s humanity.
While the book the movie is based on discusses Macdonald’s slow re-engagement with the human world, the film itself ends while they are still in a half-wild state. The director Phillipa Lowthorpe shows Macdonald up to the point at which they are going through a subtle shift where they stop trying to be a hawk and begins to inhabit their own skin again, even if they remain solitary still. The film focuses on the bruising realism of a person who has been changed by grief and nature, rather than a Hollywood-style return to normalcy.