Elsinore, Simon Stone’s drama starring Andrew Scott as the actor Ian Charleson, opened the 70th BFI London Film Festival on 7 October to a standing ovation at the Royal Festival Hall.
Elsinore is a biographical drama directed by Simon Stone and written by Stephen Beresford about the Scottish actor Ian Charleson, who lived from 1949 to 1990, according to Wikipedia and a summary of other coverage. It focuses on his performances as Hamlet at the National Theatre in the final months of his life, while he was seriously ill with AIDS. The film had its European premiere as the opening film of the 70th BFI London Film Festival on Wednesday, 7 October 2026.
The main cast includes Andrew Scott, Olivia Colman, Billie Piper and Johnny Flynn, with a wider cast that features Luke Thompson, David Dawson, Monica Dolan, Matthew Beard, Joe Locke, Georgie Glen, Sadie Soverall, Adeel Akhtar, Dickie Beau, Juliet Stevenson and Peter Mullan, according to the same summary. Scott plays Charleson, and the sources reviewed do not list who plays the other main characters.
The opening night was a notable event. A report summarised in search results from Deadline and Yahoo says that the festival opened with a passionate homecoming screening of the film and that Scott received an enormous standing ovation from the audience in the Royal Festival Hall as the credits rolled. The same coverage describes the film as a buzzy awards season frontrunner, a description that is the writers’ and not an official one.
Critics were enthusiastic about Scott. A review published on 8 October by a UK critic is titled with the line that Scott soars in the Ian Charleson biopic, and another summary says critics praised his work as extraordinary and possibly the finest performance of his career, with the heartbreak, agony, drive, joy and courage of Charleson’s story making it a dream role for any actor. These are opinions from reviews that were seen only as summaries, and an aggregate score is not available in the sources.
The subject has a place in British theatre history. The sources reviewed do not describe Charleson’s National Theatre Hamlet in any detail, so this article does not give the details of his career beyond the years of his life and the focus of the film.
The sources reviewed here do not give Stone’s earlier credits, so none are listed. The screening was the first of the film in Europe, according to the festival’s description.
The film is not part of the festival’s official competition, according to the lists published by the BFI, which include ten other films, and Delima News has a separate article on those. It is an opening gala film, which means that it will not compete for the Best Film prize announced on 18 October.
The sources reviewed do not give a release date for Elsinore in cinemas or on streaming services, so readers should check local listings. A Letterboxd page for the film exists, which shows that it is already being logged by viewers, but the page was not reviewed.
The reception at the opening suggests that the film will be one to watch as the awards season begins, and Delima News will report on its release and any nominations.
Image: Andrew Scott at the Toronto International Film Festival, 2026 (file photo). Photo: Patrick.suechan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
