Having already been awarded Best Screenplay at Cannes in Un Certain Regard, we’re delighted to close our 2025 series of British Independent Film Awards interviews with The Douglas Hickox Award (Best Debut Director) nominated filmmaker and DN alum Harry Lighton to discuss his nuanced, jubilant debut, Pillion. Lighton’s first feature film is an uncompromising yet tender exploration of a nascent queer relationship between the timid Colin (Harry Melling) and confident biker gang leader Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), built on a foundation of total power exchange. The culmination of a subject interest first charted in his short films, including the BAFTA nominated Wren Boys—which we spoke to him about back in 2018—a film that, like his current work, probes the edges of subverted queer tales. The path to Pillion began with Lighton’s discovery of Adam Mars-Jones’s novella Box Hill, a text whose first-person continuous prose and provocative tone presented an exhilarating adaptation challenge for translating it into a cinematic language that was both authentic and subversive.
Pillion is built upon contrasting personalities, contradictory desires, and opposing social expectations. Aesthetically, we are invited to take in these deliberately contrasting and seemingly oppositional worlds: the muted palette of Colin’s family home—perfectly encapsulated by Lighton as “Christmas past its sell-by date”—and the striking, dominant leather-wear of the queer biker community. This commitment extends to the film’s emotional landscape, where Lighton masterfully orchestrates a tone that pivots seamlessly between the comedic awkwardness of a dom meeting the parents and the raw, unvarnished intimacy of a relationship tested by its own extreme parameters. The camerawork, often observational and grounded, refuses to sensationalise or commodify, instead inviting audiences to scrutinise the subtle shifts in power with the same curiosity as its timid protagonist. In our interview with Lighton, we explore Pillion’s evolution from a beloved short story to a critically acclaimed feature, the collaborative and carefully choreographed approach to the film’s intimate scenes, and the profound experience of witnessing his feature debut be embraced by the very communities it represents.
I was confronted, and at points I was repulsed, and at points I was horny. And I thought that was such an interesting cocktail to try and translate into a film.
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