How do you share a film set with a notoriously fierce bird of prey?

For starters: stay still, be quiet and do not wear yellow, according to the makers of a British film about an academic who adopts a hawk while grieving her father’s death.

“H is for Hawk”, an adaptation of a bestselling memoir by Helen Macdonald, was screened at the British Film Festival in London on Sunday ahead of a fuller international roll-out. It will start screening in US cinemas in December, in time to qualify for the 2026 Oscars race.

It chronicles the Cambridge University historian, played by Claire Foy, taming and befriending the Northern goshawk as she grapples with the death of her bird-loving father, played by Brendan Gleeson, and increasingly withdraws from human contact.

The hawk appears on-screen with F

See Full Page