Serge Ioan Celebidachi’s The Yellow Tie, a life of his father, the Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache, with John Malkovich and Ben Schnetzer, had its UK premiere in Leicester Square.
Serge Ioan Celebidachi’s The Yellow Tie, a film about his father, the conductor Sergiu Celibidache, had its UK premiere at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on Wednesday 30 September 2026. John Malkovich plays the conductor in his later years.
Malkovich was born in Christopher, Illinois, in 1953 and was a charter member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire brought him two Academy Award nominations, and his films include Dangerous Liaisons and Being John Malkovich.
The film follows Celibidache from a boyhood under his father’s authority in Romania to Berlin, where he studied composition and conducting. After the war he led the Berlin Philharmonic while Wilhelm Furtwängler awaited denazification.
He was music director of the Munich Philharmonic from 1979 until his death in 1996. He refused to release commercial recordings in his lifetime, holding that music belonged in the concert hall.
Ben Schnetzer plays the younger Celibidache, with Sean Bean as his father, Demostene. Miranda Richardson and Kate Phillips play his wife, Ioana, at two ages.
After an opening in Bucharest in November 2025, Icon Film Distribution released it in British cinemas on 9 October.