Ralph Fiennes led the cast of The Choral, Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett's film of a Yorkshire choir in the First World War, at a BFI London Film Festival gala.
Ralph Fiennes, a three-time Academy Award nominee, led the cast of Nicholas Hytner’s The Choral at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Sunday 12 October 2025. Alan Bennett’s film played as a BFI London Film Festival gala.
Fiennes was born in Ipswich in 1962. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his reputation in Shakespeare at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
His Broadway Hamlet won him a Tony Award in 1995. He made his film debut as Heathcliff in 1992, and the nominations came for Schindler’s List, The English Patient and Conclave. A wider audience knows him as Lord Voldemort and as M.
Bennett set The Choral in 1916 in the fictional Yorkshire town of Ramsden. With its men gone to the war, the choral society appoints Dr Henry Guthrie, played by Fiennes, as choirmaster despite his atheism and his love of Germany. He chooses Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius because a German did not write it.
Mark Addy, Roger Allam and Alun Armstrong joined Fiennes on the carpet, and Ian McKellen attended. The film reached British cinemas on 7 November.