AIDS‑Era Play ‘Elsinore’ Opens London Film Festival

The drama "Elsinore", about an actor confronting AIDS while preparing for Hamlet, opened the London Film Festival on Wednesday. Directed by Simon Stone, the festival features 251 titles from 88 nations and runs through Oct 18. Set in the late‑1980s as the AIDS crisis spreads through London’s gay scene, the film stars Andrew Scott as Ian Charleson, the real‑life star of the Oscar‑winning 1981 film "Chariots of Fire". Charleson confides to the play’s director that he has only months left, a revelation that mirrors the tragic fate of Shakespeare’s prince. Despite knowing his time is short, he completes 24 three‑hour shows before dying seven weeks later in 1990 at age 40. Scott said the actor was a hero and that the story needed to be told about art and courage. Stone described the performance as profoundly moving, noting that crew members often had to hide tears. Olivia Colman portrays pioneering doctor Margaret Johnson, who led early HIV‑AIDS treatment when many patients were ostracised. The lineup also includes Luca Guadagnino’s "Artificial" with Andrew Garfield as OpenAI founder Sam Altman, now distributed by Neon after Amazon MGM pulled out, plus "Fjord" about a Romanian‑Norwegian couple in rural Norway, Spain’s "Bola Negra" following three gay men, and "Minotaur", a Russian CEO’s downfall amid the Ukraine war. Festival director Kristy Matheson said the event lets audiences step into unfamiliar worlds and explore the era’s moral dilemmas and community care.

Context

The 1980s AIDS epidemic devastated many gay communities in the UK, and Charleson’s real‑life battle highlighted how artists used their work to confront mortality and raise awareness about the disease.