Elsinore opens the London Film Festival slot that Oscar forgot

Since The Imitation Game opened the London Film Festival in October 2014, eleven films have followed it into the opening-night gala at the Royal Festival Hall. Their combined Oscar nomination count is zero. The Imitation Game managed eight on its own, and won the adapted screenplay prize.

That is the slot Elsinore walked into last night. Simon Stone's film about the actor Ian Charleson opened the festival's 70th edition on 7 October with Andrew Scott already installed as a Best Actor frontrunner, a standing ovation at the credits, and a room full of the people the film depicts, Deadline reported.

Eleven films, not one nomination

The run reads like a warning. Suffragette in 2015, A United Kingdom in 2016 and Breathe in 2017 were three consecutive British period dramas with awards ambitions, and all three were shut out entirely. Steve McQueen's Widows (2018) had the reviews and got nothing. The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) collected BAFTA nominations and no Oscar ones. Mangrove (2020) never had the chance (it was made for television, so the Academy would not look at it).

Then the streak got stranger. The Harder They Fall (2021), nothing. Matilda the Musical (2022), nothing. Saltburn (2023) generated roughly a winter's worth of discourse and not a single nomination. Blitz (2024) went into nominations morning with craft-category hopes and came out empty. And Wake Up Dead Man (2025) missed even the screenplay nomination that both previous Knives Out films had earned, a snub ScreenRant called disappointing at the time.

Eleven openers. Zero nominations. The arithmetic is ours, but the records are the Academy's.

The curse is a booking policy

None of this is a jinx. It is a selection effect, and a fairly legible one. The opening gala exists to sell out the Royal Festival Hall on a Wednesday in October, so it goes to a crowd-pleasing film with British stars on the red carpet. Genuine contenders launch at Venice, Telluride or Cannes, where the first reviews set the campaign, and they tend to pass through London mid-run or not at all. The opening slot has mostly been offered films that had no campaign, or films whose campaign was already somewhere else.

Which is exactly why this year is different. Elsinore premiered at Telluride on 4 September, screened in Toronto on 12 September, and arrived in London as a European premiere with the campaign machinery already running: Focus Features has it in American cinemas on 20 November, squarely in the awards corridor, and The Times has already declared the performance will win Scott an Oscar. It is the first opening film in twelve years that was a contender before it got the slot, rather than because of it.

The reviews support a campaign without leading one. Elsinore sits at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and 72 on Metacritic, good rather than rapturous, and in a Best Actor race that hardly matters: the performance, not the film, is the product. Stephen Beresford, who wrote Pride, and Stone, who last directed The Dig, have built it accordingly.

There is a neat symmetry available for anyone who wants it. The last opener to crack the Oscars was also a prestige British drama about a persecuted gay man, played by a much-loved actor. Alan Turing then, Ian Charleson now.

The man the film is about

Charleson is best remembered as Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, the 1981 Best Picture winner. In October 1989 he took over the title role in Richard Eyre's Hamlet at the National Theatre after Daniel Day-Lewis abandoned the production, and played it from 9 October to 13 November while severely ill with AIDS, his swollen face explained away to the public as sinus surgery. He died on 6 January 1990, aged 40, eight weeks after his final performance, and at his own request his death was openly attributed to AIDS, the first time a British public figure's death had been announced that way. The Ian Charleson Awards, founded in 1991, still honour classical performances by actors under 30.

The opening night leaned into the homecoming. Scott brought out the real people behind the characters, including Dr Margaret Johnson, the HIV specialist Olivia Colman plays, and Charleson's sister Lizzie, then had the DJ play a disco version of Ethel Merman and invited the hall to dance out, "like Ian, who went out performing." He was direct about the casting, too: "I'm not sure that even 10 years ago they would've put me in a film like this, as an out gay actor," per Deadline.

Scott knows the other side of this season. All of Us Strangers went into the 2024 nominations as a presumed acting contender and received nothing at all. A Telluride launch, a November release and a true story are a sturdier platform than the one he stood on then.

Where this sits in the race

The Best Actor field is the one Elsinore has to survive, and the Best Picture race around it is already crowded: La Bola Negra won Toronto's People's Choice Award, the prize that has pointed at Best Picture sixteen times in eighteen years, and The Odyssey is positioned to become the biggest Best Picture winner since Titanic if the maths holds. A festival-opening ovation in London, agreeable as it is, votes in neither contest.

Still, the festival finally gave its best seat to a film that can use it. The 70th edition runs to 18 October, with The Debut closing. British audiences get Elsinore on 29 January 2027, via StudioCanal, eight days after they learn whether the drought broke: Oscar nominations are announced on 21 January 2027, and the ceremony follows at the Dolby Theatre on 14 March.