In the run up to the release of Riz Ahmed and Aneil Karia’s “Hamlet” WePresent teamed up with Riz to explore why the 425-year-old play holds a mirror up to society today, and through a series of drama workshops and a short documentary, aim to radicalize Shakespeare for a new generation. Watch it below.
Chances are that many of you reading this will have studied at least one Shakespeare play at school, whatever decade that was in. Perhaps you found some of it exciting? Or boring? Maybe the language felt impenetrable and it was hard to follow? Or maybe you just thought “how does this hundreds of years old text relate to now”? And, really, that would be fair. The assumption by many of us is that, sure, Shakespeare might be a literary genius, but this work is just so outdated now, right? Well, no actually. And that’s exactly what our guest curator Riz Ahmed set out to prove with his adaptation of “Hamlet”, directed by Aneil Karia and released in February 2026.
This is a play about resisting the powers that be. This story is about right now.
Set in modern London, Riz plays Hamlet, who instead of the prince of Denmark, is heir to a property development empire worth millions, and while trying to avenge the murder of his father at the hands of his uncle, discovers the insidious corruption latent in his family’s company. It’s while uncovering this that Hamlet finally begins to see the world around him for the unjust place that it is, and has to decide whether to stay complicit, or fight back against the corrupt system that he has found himself on the inside of. “Hamlet is about someone grieving the illusion that the world is a fair place,” as Riz succinctly puts it. And nowhere in the film does this come into sharper focus than the famous “To be or not to be” speech, delivered as a rousing call to consciousness that will not just raise the hairs on the back of your neck because of the perilous way it was filmed, but because it will also make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about one of the best known speeches in the English language.
This belongs to the people, this belongs to us.
“The most famous speech in the English language has been deradicalized and made into something very safe and individualistic when actually it’s about a collective call to action,” says Riz. “This is a speech about resistance and fighting back, and how difficult it is to do that, because it’s scary. Because you might lose it all… It’s about resisting the powers that be. This story is about right now.” And with each passing day, and each new news story, this rings terrifyingly true.
To continue his mission of radicalizing Shakespeare, earlier this year WePresent teamed up with Riz to host a number of workshops with drama groups in the UK as part of his guest curatorship. Over the course of four days we filmed these, with director Naqqash Khalid spearheading a documentary that lays out exactly why “Hamlet” is so relevant to the moment that we find ourselves in now.
Watch now to find out how something that started out in Riz’s mind as “very posh, very white, very establishment", became not only a piece of filmmaking that reclaims Shakespeare for a new generation, but also one that wakes us up to the power of art as a weapon in our ongoing fight against injustice. As Riz says himself: “This belongs to the people, this belongs to us.”
With thanks to The Big House, Bush Theatre Young Companies, Centre 59 and Open Door
