By forefronting Jessie Buckley’s Agnes at the expense of her megastar husband, this female-directed feminist fest gives voice to the anguished howls of disenfranchised women everywhere

On paper, it already sounds the most Oscary film ever. A movie about a visionary man whose genius made him one of the greatest figures in literature. William Shakespeare is played by Paul Mescal, an actor who leaves no demographic unravished by his outrageous levels of magnetism. And yet Hamnet is a film that sidelines both of these men to supporting roles. The film is about Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, long viewed as a dumpy, illiterate woman unworthy of attention – abandoned by Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon when he swanned off to London.

Anne is referred to in Hamnet as Agnes, as she was also known, and played by Jessie Buckley, the Irish actor who could take on the role of a lamp-post and make you feel its pain. We meet Agnes curled asleep in the roots of an ancient tree. She may be illiterate, but she is a gifted herbalist who makes medicines from plants and keeps a falcon. She is her own woman – fierce, intelligent, more than match for the man she calls “the Latin tutor”. Shakespeare’s mother warns him that his bride-to-be is a forest witch.

Fredrik Gertten travels the world meeting activists who have had enough of corruption, kleptocracy and structural inequality – while Bregman’s nuggets of wisdom are a joy

Bicycling Dutch historian Rutger Bregman does not identify as an optimist. He says that optimism makes people lazy, complacent that history is going in the right direction. Instead he describes himself as a “possibilist”, a believer in the possibility that things can be different. Bregman is interviewed in this film about corruption, kleptocracy and structural inequality. The director is documentary-maker Fredrik Gertten who travels the world meeting activists who have had enough.

First, the cold hard facts. Journalist and corruption expert Sarah Chayes, a former adviser to the Obama administration, does an impressive job summarising her analysis of global kleptocracy. In Malta, the son of the murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed after exposing corruption at the highest levels of government, investigates the new scandal of “golden passports”. The film’s main focus is activism in Chile and the US. Amazon workers in New York unionise (and have a good laugh at their boss Jeff Bezos’s trip to space). In Chile, feminists march and climate activists go into battle against mining companies responsible for drought.