Tina Kakadelis
The history of queer people is often a footnote in the larger annals of recorded time, if it’s even included at all. Part of the reason LGBTQ+ period pieces are so prominent today is that they’re proof of life in reaction to the history books that have excluded their stories. David Turpin’s debut film, Ancestors, which has its world premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, reflects on the separation of generations of queer people and the ripples of loss that affect us all to this day.
First, a brief history lesson about queer life in the 1980s in the United Kingdom. Homosexuality was illegal in Ireland and would remain that way until 1993. This was the era of Margaret Thatcher and the fear surrounding the AIDS epidemic. Ancestors takes place in 1988, seven years after the first confirmed case in the UK. There’s tension, worry, and, above all else, loss. Beau (Éanna Hardwicke) has left his homeland of Ireland to make a new life in London. He escaped the criminality of his home country, but keeps himself isolated. He works at a little cafe and spends time with his one close friend (Jessica Reynolds of Kneecap). Then Tiny (Jack Wolfe), a charmingly adrift young man, finds his way into Beau’s cafe.
Because of Ancestors’ setting, there’s a blanket of melancholy that remains draped over the entire movie. For many gay men of this time, it wasn’t a matter of “if,” but “when.” A bitter resignation to the fact that entire communities were disappearing and there was no end in sight. Blood families abandoned these men to die alone in hospital beds, leaving their chosen communities as the sole source of support. To experience that much unrelenting loss in such a short amount of time is incomprehensible to those who didn’t experience it. The viewer knows loss will come to the characters in Ancestors, but how and to whom is not immediately clear.
Despite the circumstances, Ancestors doesn’t veer into the sensationalist or melodramatic. Its portrayal of the era is honest and unflinchingly heartbreaking. There’s such profound, monumental loss that, of course, it permeates every decision these characters and real people were making. How do you go on living when it feels like there’s no place for you and no future to dream of? Beau has left a country that’s made his existence illegal and entered a vast world that should feel full of possibilities. It’s difficult to shake the melancholy of Beau and Ancestors, which feels reminiscent of the COVID pandemic. Where human connection is the answer to the feeling of isolation and tragedy, but this same connection also brings pain.
“You need something to keep you here, don’t you? In the world. Otherwise you’re just falling,” Beau asks gently. It’s the most emotional he’s allowed himself to be throughout the film. His attitude to most of life is to just put his head down and plow through, but loss isn’t something that can be hurtled through. It permeates every strand of DNA and every corner of the brain. Ancestors is seismic in this way. The ripples of AIDS have become tidal waves today, not just in the loss of a generation, but in the conservative viewpoints that continue to harm LGBTQ people. Ancestors is hauntingly and wholly captivating, a meditation on memory; both our own and of people we will never meet, but whose existence provided a history and legacy of resilience. It’s choosing to love, honor, and care, even in the most dire of circumstances. Much like Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, Ancestors is cataclysmically gentle, a reflection of destruction through a lens cradled by love.
