In the lead-up to its world premiere, Elsinore (part of Toronto’s Special Presentations programme) became the buzziest British title of the year, building up anticipation for this biographical drama centred on the final performance of Scottish actor Ian Charleson, best known for his role as Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire (1981), coinciding with his AIDS diagnosis. There’s no one better suited to play Charleson than Olivier winner Andrew Scott, whose precision and tenacity shine through in every gesture – a tour-de-force portrayal of pain.

The film takes place in 1989, and while it’s only eight years after the Oscar wins for Chariots of Fire, what’s remembered as iconic is the soundtrack, not the actor. As a result, Elsinore takes the shape of Charleson’s fears: time is running out, and the next big breakthrough may never come. In the opening scene, an actor storms off stage, slamming the dressing-room door and revealing the fleeing man’s identity – it’s Daniel Day-Lewis, who’s playing Hamlet in a long-awaited production at London’s National Theatre. Day-Lewis’s infamous walk-off, after which he never took the stage again, serves as the perfect opportunity for Charleson to step in and revive his career.

Director Simon Stone teams up with BAFTA-winning screenwriter Stephen Beresford to tell Charleson’s story through weeks of draining, but riveting, rehearsals stitched together in compelling montage sequences that bear witness to the performer’s craft. In those scenes, Charleson’s Hamlet is never alone in the professional milieu, and neither is Scott’s character in the personal one – the former supported by his castmates and director Richard Eyre (Johnny Flynn), and the latter by his close friend Patsy Pollock (Billie Piper), and the chosen “family” of gay friends, lovers and allies. Olivia Colman plays Dr Margaret Johnson, the revolutionary clinician who treated Charleson and many others at a time when AIDS was considered a death sentence. While Johnson’s role is correctional and strict, a kind of tenderness lights up Colman’s taciturn performance, even when she has to argue against her stubborn patient’s refrain, “But I have to play Hamlet!”

But as much as Hamlet is about death and retribution, Elsinore is about life. A throbbing, vivacious film like this owes its power to a life-long dedication to the theatre as the space where dreams become reality. While the reality itself is haunted by the AIDS crisis, made very prominent through supporting roles by Heartstopper’s Joe Locke and David Dawson, who plays Derek Jarman, the shared sense of purpose – to bring Hamlet to life – is the guiding light carrying Charleson through the darkest times as his own health declines.

At times, it feels like it’s all in cinematographer Mike Eley’s capable hands to underline the contradictions of illness and legacy through the insistent handheld facial close-ups. Seeing Hamlet’s face up close is revelatory not only because the technique lays bare Scott’s physical state, matching that of the ailing Charleson (losing weight but retaining the sparkle in his eye), but also because it enables his sense of triumph to fill the screen every time he perfects a monologue. A tireless pursuit of the sublime in his acting pushes him closer to death, but he knows, like Hamlet, that death is coming for him. Charleson takes comfort in that inevitability, and Elsinore becomes a love letter to the craft and the community necessary to build a life after death, even if only on a stage.

Elsinore was produced by StudioCanal (France) and LD Entertainment (USA) in co-production with Lucky Red (Italy) and Magnolia Mae Films (UK). StudioCanal is also handling the film’s sales worldwide.