Andrew Scott Opens the London Film Festival Playing an Actor Who Died of AIDS

The BFI London Film Festival has named its opening-night film: Elsinore, with Andrew Scott as the Scottish actor Ian Charleson. It takes the 7 October gala at the Royal Festival Hall, part of the Southbank Centre and, in THR's phrase, “just a stone's throw from the National Theatre” — where the Guardian reports many of the film's scenes are set.

Simon Stone (The Dig) directs, from a script by Stephen Beresford, who wrote Pride. Focus Features opens it in select US theaters on 20 November; StudioCanal goes wide in the UK from 29 January 2027. The festival runs 7–18 October, and this is its 70th edition.

Who Ian Charleson was

Charleson came to international attention through Chariots of Fire and Gandhi, but his focus — before the films and after them — was classical theatre. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986.

In 1989, the Guardian reports, Daniel Day-Lewis abruptly left a National Theatre production of Hamlet after seeing his father's ghost on stage. Charleson was 40, terminally ill, and 15 years on from the first time he had played the part. The Guardian's account carries two versions of how he got it: he was drafted in by Richard Eyre, and he persuaded Eyre to let him reprise it over the director's misgivings about his health. THR has Day-Lewis pulling out mid-performance.

Cast, crew and audience were told the swelling in his face came from a sinus operation. It was septicaemia.

The run lasted six weeks, until mid-November. The Guardian reports it was widely regarded as one of the great stage performances. The day after the last show, Ian McKellen refused the Evening Standard best actor award and handed his statuette to Charleson.

Charleson died eight weeks later, of AIDS. He was, the Guardian reports, the first showbiz figure in the UK to ask that AIDS be recorded as what killed him — a request the paper credits with generating considerably more public awareness of the condition.

The official synopsis calls the film “a powerful, deeply moving and inspiring true story of the actor Ian Charleson who faced incredible odds while preparing to give the performance of his life in Hamlet at the National Theatre in London.”

Who is making it

Beresford wrote Pride, which PinkNews describes as a movie honoring the LGBTQ+ activists who raised money for families affected by the 1984 miners' strike. Scott was in that cast, and the Guardian notes the two reunite here 12 years on.

Olivia Colman, Scott's Fleabag co-star, plays Charleson's doctor. David Dawson plays Derek Jarman. Dickie Beau is in it too — he spent six years on the road with a solo show built as a tribute to that Hamlet. The Guardian says Juliet Stevenson and Peter Mullan are believed to play Charleson's parents. Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Luke Thompson, Joe Locke, Monica Dolan, Matthew Beard, Adeel Akhtar, Kadiff Kirwan, Georgie Glen and Sadie Soverall fill out the ensemble. Scott also produces.

Thompson told THR the film is “a real love letter to theater,” and said earlier this year: “Every time I tell the story, I get shivers.”

Stone, on his lead: “We are so lucky to have Andrew Scott, a London Hamlet himself, breathing delicate inspiring life into this beautiful story.”

The Andrew Scott part

Scott first talked about his sexuality in 2013, in an Independent interview while promoting the BBC drama Legacy. PinkNews recounts what he said: “Mercifully, these days people don't see being gay as a character flaw. But nor is it a virtue, like kindness. Or a talent, like playing the banjo. It's just a fact. Of course, it's part of my make-up, but I don't want to trade on it.”

The Guardian calls the role Oscar-tipped and reports considerable awards buzz already, with the expectation that voters will want to reward an actor whose work in All of Us Strangers was passed over for both an Oscar and a Bafta nomination. The Guardian also has Elsinore down for a gala slot at Toronto, with a Telluride world premiere the week before predicted rather than confirmed.

Kristy Matheson, the festival's artistic director, said the film is “anchored by Andrew Scott's astounding central performance,” that few films this year will leave a comparable imprint on audiences, and that the BFI could not be prouder to open the festival's 70th edition with a film centering “community, resistance and the triumph of art.”

An actor who kept working while he was dying, and who then asked for the disease to be named. That is the film going first, on 7 October.