The film is based on the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig's 1935 biography, Mary Stuart, a long-term bestseller in Germany and France but out of print in the UK and the US for decades until 2010.

Darnley conspires with Moray and the Scottish Lords to murder Rizzio in cold blood in front of a heavily pregnant Mary.

Eric Kohn, Indiewire: "Mary Queen of Scots features an appealing reworking of familiar contents: while in many ways a traditional period drama, its time-shifting structure and dreamlike narration manages to critique the very strictures of the genre.

But where it was expected that madness would infuse each shot with the same dark matter from which the novel is made, Thomas Imbach chooses the stylistic and narrative blueprint.

It is through skillfully composed and superbly illuminated shots that he tells the story of this Queen of Scotland, with a tragic destiny.