The 70th BFI London Film Festival opens on 7 October 2026 with the European premiere of Simon Stone's Elsinore at the Royal Festival Hall, with Andrew Scott and Olivia Colman.
Simon Stone was born in Basel in 1984, grew up in Australia and made his name in the theatre by rewriting canonical plays from the ground up rather than staging them. He founded the Hayloft Project in his twenties and remounted its Spring Awakening at Belvoir St Theatre in 2008, and he has since taken Ibsen and Chekhov apart and reset them in the present. His Yerma at the Young Vic in 2016, with Billie Piper in the title role, ran twice in London before transferring to the Park Avenue Armory in New York.
Elsinore follows the actor Ian Charleson preparing to play Hamlet at the National Theatre while facing considerable personal odds, so Stone has turned his method on a real life for the first time. Stephen Beresford wrote it, and the cast brings Andrew Scott, Olivia Colman, Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Juliet Stevenson and Peter Mullan into one film. Piper’s presence connects it directly to the London stage work that made his name.
The European premiere is at the Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday 7 October 2026 at 7.15pm, opening the seventieth BFI London Film Festival. The Opening Night Gala is the one evening of the twelve days with a red carpet and receptions before and after the screening. The film shows again in the same hall on Friday 9 October.