London Film Festival opens with 'Elsinore,' reviving a forgotten theater tragedy

The 70th BFI London Film Festival opened Wednesday evening at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall with the European premiere of "Elsinore," a dramatization of the final months of the Scottish actor Ian Charleson, who starred as Hamlet at the National Theatre in the autumn of 1989 while dying of AIDS-related illness. Charleson's death three months after that run, in January 1990, became the first widely reported case of a British public figure's death attributed openly to the disease, at his own request.

The film was selected as the Opening Night Gala of the 70th edition of the festival, which runs through October 18. Directed by Simon Stone from a screenplay by Stephen Beresford, it stars Andrew Scott as Charleson alongside Olivia Colman, Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Luke Thompson, Monica Dolan, Juliet Stevenson, Joe Locke, Adeel Akhtar, Matthew Beard, David Dawson, Kadiff Kirwan, Dickie Beau and Peter Mullan. Scott, who has drawn some of the year's strongest reviews for the role, is also a producer on the project, which was financed by Studiocanal, LD Entertainment, Lucky Red and Magnolia Mae Films.

By the numbers

This year's festival, the BFI's 70th, is its largest in recent memory by several measures laid out in the organization's full-programme announcement last month:

• 251 features, shorts, series and immersive works from 88 countries, screening over 12 days
• 33 world premieres, plus 16 international and 20 European premieres
• 109 works, or 43 percent of the program, directed by women
• Festival venues spanning BFI Southbank, the BFI IMAX, four West End cinemas and ten additional sites across the United Kingdom

"Elsinore" itself had already made the festival rounds before reaching London, having had its world premiere at Telluride in early September and a subsequent screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. Focus Features, which acquired the film in a competitive sale over the summer, plans to open it in American theaters on November 20 before expanding over the Thanksgiving holiday, according to the distributor's acquisition announcement. Studiocanal, which also handles international sales, will release the film in United Kingdom cinemas on January 29, 2027; Universal Pictures International is distributing in Latin America. Terms of the Focus Features deal were not disclosed.

A Hamlet played against the clock

The film's subject is a genuine piece of British theater history. Charleson, best known internationally for playing the Olympic runner Eric Liddell in "Chariots of Fire" and the missionary Charlie Andrews in "Gandhi," had been diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1986. In September 1989, the National Theatre's production of "Hamlet," directed by Richard Eyre and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, was thrown into crisis when Day-Lewis stopped mid-performance during the scene with his father's ghost, walked off the Olivier Theatre stage and did not return; his understudy, Jeremy Northam, finished the performance that night.

Eyre turned to Charleson, who had played the role once before, to take over the production despite reservations about his declining health. Charleson performed Hamlet at the National from October 9 to November 13, 1989, his face visibly swollen from septicemia, while the public was told he was recovering from sinus surgery. The run was received as a critical triumph; the Sunday Times critic John Peter later wrote that Charleson had delivered the performance in the final weeks of his life, unknown to most of the audience. Charleson died on January 6, 1990, at 40, eight weeks after the production closed. He asked that the cause be made public in order to raise awareness of AIDS, a request that made his death a landmark moment in Britain's public reckoning with the epidemic. The Ian Charleson Awards, honoring the best classical stage performances in Britain by actors under 30, were founded in his memory the following year.

Who stands to gain

The immediate commercial stakes sit with Focus Features and Studiocanal, both of which are counting on awards-season attention to carry "Elsinore" into a crowded late-year marketplace; the film's producers, including Andrea Occhipinti of Lucky Red, Gabrielle Tana of Magnolia Mae Films, and Pete Shilaimon and Mickey Liddell of LD Entertainment, have a direct financial interest in that trajectory. For the BFI, the selection is a marquee moment in a 70th-anniversary edition the organization has promoted heavily, with artistic director Kristy Matheson framing the program as a reflection of a festival born, seven decades ago, during a period of rapid social change.

Beyond the business of the festival, the film has drawn renewed attention from LGBTQ+ history advocates and AIDS-awareness organizations, for whom Charleson's story — and his explicit wish that his death be used to educate the public — has long been cited as a turning point in how Britain discussed the disease. Scott's own profile, already elevated by recent television and stage work, stands to rise further if the awards-season speculation surrounding his performance holds up through the winter.

Critics respond

Reaction to "Elsinore" has not been uniform. At its earlier festival stops, some critics praised Scott's performance while questioning the film's construction around it; after the London screening, British press coverage tilted more decisively toward predicting an awards run for Scott specifically, with reviews in several London papers framing him as a leading contender for the Best Actor Oscar, a reaction captured in a roundup of five-star and four-star notices published the morning after the gala. The review published the night of the premiere called Scott "utterly enthralling" while noting the film takes time to find its footing, and that broader split between the lead performance and the surrounding film has followed "Elsinore" since Telluride.

"Anchored by Andrew Scott's astounding central performance, few films will leave a lasting imprint on audiences this year quite like Elsinore. ... We could not be prouder to open the 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival with Elsinore, a film that centres community, resistance and the triumph of art."

The statement came from Matheson in the festival's official announcement of the selection. Stone, the director, said in the same release that he could not be prouder to present "this quintessentially London film" on opening night, adding that Charleson had had many of his greatest triumphs on West End and National Theatre stages before "ending his short but dazzling career playing an unforgettable Hamlet," and that he considered it fitting that Scott — who has himself played Hamlet in London — would bring the story to the screen for "the hometown audience."

Commentary on the broader slate of reviews, including a compilation of post-screening critical reaction, noted that even the more skeptical notices about the film's structure stopped short of criticizing Scott's performance itself, which several outlets described in terms typically reserved for a frontrunner. Coverage of the opening gala from trade press, including a report on the selection of "Elsinore" to open the festival, noted that the screening's proximity to the National Theatre itself — visible across the Thames from the Royal Festival Hall — gave the evening an added layer of resonance for an audience that included cast members and festival patrons.

What happens next

The festival continues through October 18, when it closes with the UK premiere of Jesse Eisenberg's "The Debut." For "Elsinore," the next milestones are commercial rather than ceremonial: the limited US theatrical release on November 20, a wider Thanksgiving expansion, and the UK opening in January, timed to land inside the nominations window for next year's major film awards. Academy Awards nominations voting does not begin until December, and no nominations will be announced until January, meaning the "frontrunner" language now attached to Scott's performance remains, for the moment, a critical consensus rather than a verified outcome. Distributors will be watching specialty box-office returns in the coming weeks as a more concrete signal of whether the reception in Telluride, Toronto and now London translates into ticket sales once the film reaches the wider public.