76th Berlin International Film Festival: Ethan Hawke Carries The Weight, a Tale of Gold, Grit and the Gravity of Fatherhood

American actor Ethan Hawke, wearing a Tom Ford by Haider Ackermann sequined suit, at the photocall for his new film in Berlin. Photograph (above) and cover picture of Dua Lipa by Jay Zoo for DAM

Ethan Hawke discussed The Weight, a lean, Depression-era drama charged with emotional urgency at the Berlin Film Festival. Playing a father coerced into smuggling gold through unforgiving wilderness to secure his freedom and reunite with his daughter, the actor delivers a gritty performance. Opposite Russell Crowe and directed by Padraic McKinley, the film blends stark action with an exploration of sacrifice, solidarity and the cost of defying institutional power. Story by Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photography by Jay Zoo

Sam Hazeldine, Austin Amelio, Ethan Hawke,

Padraic McKinley, Avi Nash, Julia Jones and

Lucas Lynggaard Tonnesen at the Berlinale.  

UNDER the winter glare of Berlin’s February light, Ethan Hawke arrived at the Grand Hyatt to present his new film at the city's film festival. The survival drama, set during the Depression in America, strips heroism down to its rawest impulse: love.

Hawke’s presence at the photocall was characteristically unforced. Dressed in a black sequined bouclé suit from Tom Ford by Haider Ackermann, offset with a narrow leather tie, he managed to look both formal and subtly subversive. The texture of the fabric caught the camera flashes without veering into ostentation; a visual metaphor, perhaps, for an actor whose career has balanced arthouse introspection with muscular mainstream roles. 

In The Weight, Hawke plays Samuel Murphy, a father living in 1933 Oregon whose life collapses when he is separated from his daughter and sent to a punishing labour camp. The premise is stark: offered a chance at early release, Murphy must transport smuggled gold through hostile wilderness under the watch of a ruthless warden, played with simmering authority by Russell Crowe. The journey becomes both a physical ordeal and a moral reckoning.

The film arrives at a moment when questions of institutional power and collective responsibility resonate sharply

Ethan Hawke joking around with film director

Padraic McKinley at their Berlin photocall. 

Directed by Padraic McKinley, the film draws on the stripped-back tension of 1970s American action cinema while grounding itself in the psychological realism that has long been Hawke’s forte. 

Wide shots of Oregon’s unforgiving terrain underscore the insignificance of the men crossing it, bent beneath the literal and symbolic weight of gold. Yet the film resists easy mythmaking. Murphy is not a conventional hero; he is exhausted, frightened and often unsure. What propels him forward is not bravado but the singular pull of fatherhood.

Speaking in Berlin, Hawke described the title as a reflection of emotional gravity, the burden of responsibility and the cost of devotion. For an actor who has built a career on exploring moral ambiguity, the role offers fertile ground. His performance is stripped of flourish, rooted instead in physicality: the slump of shoulders, the wary glance over a campfire, the quiet calculation behind the eyes. It is a study in endurance rather than spectacle.

The Berlinale has long championed films that fuse political undercurrents with intimate storytelling, and The Weight arrives at a moment when questions of institutional power and collective responsibility resonate sharply. Beneath its period setting lies a contemporary pulse: a group of disparate men discovering shared cause against systemic exploitation.

The film wastes little time on sentimentality. Instead, it delivers a taut, atmospheric examination of sacrifice and solidarity. For Hawke, now more than three decades into his career, it marks another chapter in a body of work defined by restless curiosity and moral inquiry.