Elsinore enters the Bifas the way a film does when critics and industry agree before the ceremony starts: 12 nominations across picture, director, lead performance, screenplay, cinematography, editing, costume, production design, music, sound, make-up, and casting. That breadth isn't a scatter-gun — it signals a film where every department was working at the same level, which is rarer than it sounds. Andrew Scott plays Ian Charleson, the Scottish actor who performed Hamlet at the National Theatre in 1989 while dying of Aids, and who died in January 1990 at 40. The biographical and dramatic stakes are extreme: Scott must play an actor playing Shakespeare while the audience knows the character is dying. Simon Stone directs. Olivia Colman, Billie Piper, and Johnny Flynn co-star. The Guardian's Benjamin Lee called it 'a devastating movie' that 'implores us to remember' Charleson and the men like him. It premiered at Telluride in September and has gathered momentum since. The Oscar conversation around Scott is specific and consequential: he would be the first openly gay actor to win best actor. That framing will follow the film through awards season whether the filmmakers want it or not — it adds a layer of cultural weight that neither helps nor hurts the film itself, but shapes how the win (or loss) gets narrated. Clio Barnard's I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning sits second with eight nominations, including best director and best ensemble for its Birmingham-set cast. Barnard is one of the most consistent directors working in British cinema — The Selfish Giant and Dark River established a grammar of working-class realism that this film apparently extends. Peter Bradshaw's five-star review notes 'poignancy, defiance and contaminated euphoria,' which is a precise description of what Barnard does at her best. Ashley Walters' Animol is third with seven nominations, notable for Tut Nyuot's lead performance nomination and for Walters' debut director nod — a transition from Top Boy and Adolescence performer to filmmaker. Mike Leigh's Tender Loving Care picks up four nominations and is listed as his final film. That designation will influence how it's received regardless of its merits, which is the difficulty of any artist's announced last work. The Bifas' non-gendered acting categories mean Scott competes against Juliette Binoche (Queen at Sea) and Leisa Gwenllian (Effi o Blaenau, a Welsh-language adaptation) — a category that rewards the performance, not the marketing category it was entered into. The Cinema of the Year award, which the Bifas introduced in 2025, carries a small but pointed charge this year: the Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford is threatened with closure by its landlord, Oriel College, Oxford University. A cinema that screens independent and repertory programming being evicted by one of the wealthiest Oxford colleges is the kind of institutional irony that writes its own caption. The award won't save it, but it names the stakes. The ceremony is at the Roundhouse in London on 6 December.
