Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor brought Oliver Hermanus’s The History of Sound, a romance told through American folk song, to the BFI London Film Festival.
Paul Mescal of Normal People and Josh O’Connor brought Oliver Hermanus’s The History of Sound to the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Saturday 18 October 2025. The love story, told through American folk song, played at the BFI London Film Festival.
Mescal was born in Dublin in 1996 and raised in Maynooth, where he played Gaelic football for Kildare until a jaw injury ended it. He first went on stage at sixteen, as the Phantom in a school musical, and trained at The Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin.
Normal People won him a BAFTA in 2020 and Aftersun an Academy Award nomination. His Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire in the West End won an Olivier Award.
Ben Shattuck adapted the film from his own short story. It follows Lionel and David, two young men who set out in the shadow of the First World War to record the music of Americans and collect folk songs.
The film had competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May. Both stars had a second film at the festival: Mescal premiered Hamnet the week before, and O’Connor premiered The Mastermind.