David Turpin's debut feature Ancestors is a dreamy, ghost-inflected drama set in 1988 London that explores the devastating toll of the Aids crisis on gay men, reviewed here at the Toronto film festival. The film centres on Beau, a café worker played by Irish actor Éanna Hardwicke, who takes a homeless young man named Tiny under his wing before Tiny reveals he is HIV-positive and later disappears, prompting Beau's search for him. The reviewer praises the film's ambition and emotional resonance in bridging generations affected by the crisis, while noting it is uneven and occasionally overreaches.

Hardwicke, previously notable for playing Roy Keane in Saipan, delivers what the review calls a mesmerising, authentic performance, supported by Rupert Everett as café owner "Auntie" Maurice, Jack Wolfe as Tiny, and Jessica Reynolds as Beau's friend Shell. The film shifts between timelines, reality and dream, and colour and black-and-white, working best in its grounded conversational scenes but faltering with some underwhelming stylistic flourishes, including a diverting but inconsequential turn from Christina Hendricks. Overall it is described as a striking but muddled first feature, more interested in emotional connection than narrative mechanics.