London Film Festival kicks off with ‘Elsinore,’ true story of actor with AIDS playing Hamlet

Actor Alyth Ross poses on the red carpet upon arrival to attend the premiere of the film ‘Elsinore’ at the Royal Festival Hall in London on October 7, 2026, during the BFI London Film Festival. — AFP pic

First Published: Thursday, 08 Oct 2026 9:22 AM MYT

LONDON, Oct 8 — The searing drama Elsinore starring Olivia Colman and Andrew Scott in a true story about an actor dying with AIDS preparing to play Hamlet opened the London Film Festival Wednesday.

Directed by Simon Stone (The Dig), it raises the curtain on the 2026 festival which showcases 251 films from 88 countries until October 18.

Set in the late 1980s as the AIDS epidemic is beginning to ravage London’s gay community, Scott plays actor Ian Charleson, who had been acclaimed for his role in the 1981 Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire, as he rehearses for Hamlet at London’s National Theatre.

He confides to the play’s director that he has been diagnosed with AIDS and has months to live, as he takes on the role of Shakespeare’s character haunted by his own mortality.

Despite his impending death, Charleson managed to carry out 24 three-hour performances, before dying seven weeks later in 1990 aged just 40.

“He was a real hero for doing it,” Scott told AFP on the red carpet before the screening.

“(It’s) a story that I think needs to be told about art and about this extraordinary man who was so courageous and talented and who was taken from us too quickly,” he added.

Scott’s performance, which has won him critical acclaim and whispers about a possible Oscar nomination, was hailed by Stone as “incredibly moving”.

“More than once various crew members had to stifle sobs and tears. It happened to me a couple of times,” the director told AFP.

Colman plays pioneering doctor Margaret Johnson, who spearheaded work in treating HIV and AIDS, at a time when many patients, predominantly gay men, found themselves shunned and ostracised.

Other eagerly awaited films at this year’s festival include the biographical dark comedy Artificial from Luca Guadagnino, starring Andrew Garfield as the founder of OpenAI Sam Altman, chronicling the days when he was ousted from the company only to return later.

The film found itself without a distributor when Amazon MGM Studios withdrew this summer, before being taken up by the independent company Neon.

Other films include Fjord about a Romanian-Norwegian couple who move to remote Norwegian village; Bola Negra which traces the lives of three gay men in Spain; and Minotaur a wealthy Russian CEO whose life collapses amid the Ukraine war.

The annual event was a chance “to experience worlds outside ourselves,” said festival director Kristy Matheson.

It was also an opportunity to uncover “tumults of the era ... cinematic thrills, moral conundrums and a reoccurring exploration of care and community”. — AFP