Othello

An evocative and imaginative exploration of the racial tensions in Othello and how the themes in Shakespeare's play still resonate today.

Filmed version of the 2019 Stratford Festival production.

In the Huasteca of Tamaulipas during the most important dance festival of the region, Julia, Huapango national champion, announces her marriage to the distinguished and wealthy rancher Otilio, while Santiago, her dance partner, driven by jealousy and spite, decides to take revenge on the newlyweds.

The head of the Kimberly household rules it with an iron fist. Unfortunately the head of the Kimberly household isn't Grant (J.H. Gilmore), the father and wealthy Wall Street magnate - it's his spoiled, headstrong daughter Catherine (Virginia Pearson). She is so willful that she has earned the name "Impossible Catherine," and her whole focus in life is to prove women's superiority over the masculine gender.

The evil Iago pretends to be friend of Othello in order to manipulate him to serve his own end in the film version of this Shakespeare classic.

Half-caste bandit Omkara Shukla abducts his lady love, Dolly Mishra, from her family. Thanks to his cleverness, he gets away with the kidnapping. A conspiracy, however, forms against him when he denies his right-hand man, Langda Tyagi, a promotion. Ultimately, this plot threatens not only his relationship with Dolly, but their lives and those of their associates as well.

When a secret marriage is planned between Othello, a Moorish general, and Desdemona, the daughter of Senator Brabantio, her old suitor Roderigo takes it hard. He allies himself with Iago, who has his own grudge against Othello, and the two conspire to bring Othello down. When their first plan, to have him accused of witchcraft, fails, they plant evidence intended to make him believe Desdemona is unfaithful.

Noble Moroccan Othello finds his life with beautiful, fiercely loyal Desdemona thrown tragically out of balance when secretly jealous, scheming confidante Iago begins an insidious campaign of lies and treachery.

A Shakespearian actor starring as Othello opposite his wife finds the character's jealous rage taking over his mind off-stage.

Shakespeare’s Othello is revisited exactly as it was written, brought into the present through the power of dialect alone. Iago, Othello, and Desdemona are regrettably still among us, in contemporary events told through a great classic. Set in the early 2000s, it is a timeless story where good and evil intertwine in a maelstrom of deceit, betrayal and mad jealousy.

In the Globe Theatre, Director Ola Ince debuts in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse with Shakespeare’s confronting look at the destructive impact of institutional racism, toxic masculinity, and a justice system locked in a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy.