Out-of-work, UK actors Sam and Mark are in a pickle about what to do with their time in lockdown. Escaping into the violent online world of Grand Theft Auto V, they happen upon an amphitheatre. Inspired, they decide to mount a full production of Hamlet in the city of Los Santos, a perfect setting for Shakespeare’s blood-soaked tragedy. Together they conduct auditions, scout locations, and rehearse. Thus, the game’s afoot and the newly assembled troupe suffers the slings and arrows of producing virtual theatre: scheduling conflicts, technical difficulties, and the constant threat of a PvP ambush.
When the Bard wrote “All the world’s a stage,” he certainly didn’t have the virtual world in mind, nor could he have imagined the cast of players ranging from professional actors with limited gaming experience to mechanically skilled Shakespearean noobs, a menagerie of eccentric avatars, including a mute stage manager and the unforgettable ParTebMosMir, a naked, green alien and agent of chaos who quotes from the Quran and handles security. Grand Theft Hamlet celebrates the joy and community in creating art.
Delightful. Innovative, highly amusing and often touching.
Leslie Felperin, Hollywood Reporter
Mark Oosterveen, Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls
UK
2024
In English with open captions
At SFU Woodwards
At The Rio
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Beth Levison, Sam Bisbee, Jackie Kelman Bisbee, Cody Ryder, Will Clarke, Will Clarke
Producer
Julia Ton, Rebecca Wolff
Screenwriter
Pinny Grylls, Sam Crane
Original Music
Jamie Perera
Pinny Grylls
After founding Birds Eye View Film Festival, Pinny Grylls became an award-winning documentary and commercial director. Her first short documentary, Peter and Ben (2008), won awards at Aspen, London Short Film Festival, and SXSW. Since then she has specialized in making documentaries about theatre, opera, and dance. She is a proud member of the hard-of-hearing/deaf community and is learning British Sign Language. Her first fiction feature Hear My Voice is in development with BFI funding. Grand Theft Hamlet is her debut documentary feature.
Sam Crane
Sam Crane is an award-winning machinima video artist and actor. In a theatre career spanning 20 years, he has been critically acclaimed for his performances at the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, in the West End, and on Broadway. His recent acting credits include Harry Potter in the West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2022) and as Jacques-Louis David in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (2023). His machinima film We Are Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On (2022) won awards at Milan Machinima Festival and the Athens Digital Arts Festival. He is a PhD candidate at York University’s School of Arts and Creative Technologies and a member of the PEERS programme of artistic researchers at Zurich University of the Arts.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
I Am the Blues + Robert Connely Farr Live
This VIFF Live event brings together Robert Connely Farr, performing an hour-long set of authentic Mississippi blues, followed by Daniel Cross's documentary I Am the Blues (106 min.) about the old time Delta Blues.
Follies
After two kids and 16 years of marriage, François and Julie decide to open up their relationship in a bid to rekindle their dwindling sex life. A painfully hilarious and brutally honest depiction of love, sex, and intimacy in the age of the internet.
Agatha's Almanac
Shot over six years on vibrant 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is an artful documentary portrait of filmmaker Amalie Atkin’s octogenarian aunt, who has fashioned herself an endearingly simple and self-sustaining lifestyle on her Manitoba farm.
