(Feng Xiaogang, 2006, Hong Kong) Shakespeare meets wuxia in this loose adaptation set in the Tang Dynasty.

(Akira Kurosawa, 1960, Japan) Simultaneously an adaptation of Hamlet and a film noir critique of postwar Japan and the venality of corporate life.

(Clément Maurice, 1900, France) One of the earliest film adaptations of the play, starring Sarah Bernhardt in what may be the first speaking role for a woman in film. It’s two minutes long.

(Grigori Kozintsev, script by Boris Pasternak, music by Dmitri Shostakovich, 1964, Soviet Union) To quote from The Guardian: “Forget your Oliviers and your Branaghs: the greatest cinematic Dane was Russian. As well as being the prince of Soviet actors, Innokenti Smoktunovsky was a Red Army hero who spent time in Stalin’s gulag, and his boyish, bewildered Hamlet knows only too well what it’s like to be crushed by the machine. Manoeuvring the camera around a warren of suffocating spaces, director Grigori Kozintsev makes the tragedy into a parable of power and powerlessness.”

(Vishal Bhardwaj, India, 2014) The personal and political intersect in this adaptation set during the Kashmiri Insurgency.

(Sherwood Hu, 2006, China) Jaw-droppingly beautiful Hamlet set in ancient Tibet. With some real surprises.