H Is For Hawk
2025 | Dir Philippa Lowthorpe | UK | USA | 115 mins
Thursday 05 March 2026 at 2.00pm (HOH subtitles) and 7.00pm (plus Q&A)
Stars: Claire Foy, Brendon Gleeson, Denise Gough
Based on Helen Macdonald’s award-winning memoir. When Helen's beloved father passes away, she is overtaken by grief and loses herself in memories of their time birding and exploring the natural world together. She becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk, and so she brings the fearsome bird Mabel home to Cambridge with her. Ready to embark on the arduous process of trying to train the wildest of animals, Helen fills the freezer with hawk food and turns off her phone. But as she labours to teach Mabel how to hunt and fly free on her own, Helen uncovers how neglected her own emotions and life have become. Based on a true story and a memoir of the same name, H IS FOR HAWK is a soaring journey of the connection between people and nature, and how it might be possible to reconcile loss through love.
Boasting a sensitive performance from Claire Foy and magnificent photographic sequences of ‘Mabel’, the hawk, in flight, this is a stirring study of mourning and redemption.
The 2.00pm screening includes subtitles for those with hearing loss and with a post-film discussion in association with the Croydon U3A Film Group. All are welcome to attend.
The 7.00pm screening is followed by a Q&A with costume designer Amy Roberts.
Amy Roberts studied the Theatre Design Course at Croydon Art College - "A brilliant experience that really made me do what I do". She comments that "a costume designer's job can be open to all number of different abilities and skills".
She is an award-winning costume designer whose work spans film, television, opera, and theatre. She is best known for her work on The Crown, for which she received two Primetime Emmy Awards (Outstanding Period Costumes in 2020 and Outstanding Contemporary Costumes in 2024) and multiple nominations. She also earned BAFTA winning recognition for BBC’s Oliver Twist, The Virgin Queen, and An Englishman Abroad, as well as a BAFTA nomination for Call the Midwife. Amy won a Royal Television Society Award for Cilla and received an Emmy nomination for the miniseries Upstairs Downstairs. Across her career, Amy has contributed to nearly one hundred productions, including Doctor Who (1977–1983), Wuthering Heights, Collision, An Inspector Calls, Prime Suspect 1973, The Tunnel, Swallows and Amazons, and Cleaning Up. Her theatre credits include Arcadia, The Lady from Dubuque, Phaedra, and Aunt Dan and Lemon, and she was nominated for an Olivier Award for The Misanthrope.
Amy’s recent work includes The Seven Dials Mystery for Netflix, based on Agatha Christie’s 1929 novel and directed by Chris Sweeney, and the adaptation of Costa winning, biographical drama, H Is for Hawk (2025), directed by Philippa Lowthorpe.