Pillion’s Harry Lighton on debut success

Harry Lighton, writer and director of Pillion, says being “sensitive, but also honest” has been key to creating an authentic story of a BDSM relationship between a biker and his submissive.

Starring Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling, Pillion – which was nominated in three categories at the 2026 EE BAFTA Film Awards, is a thought-provoking film about self-discovery and love. Lighton explains: “I think that my attitude was to be sensitive, but not too reverential. If you’re overly worried about how a community will react to your work, you run the risk of only showing the best parts of those communities and the representation becomes idealised. My attitude was I wanted to portray a range of complex kink relationships, but not to try and sanitise them or turn them into saints.”

Part of the 2017 cohort of the BFI NETWORK & BAFTA Mentoring programme in partnership with BFI Flare, Lighton is no stranger to telling impactful stories, and his film Wren Boys was nominated for Best British Short at the EE BAFTA Film Awards in 2018. Here he shares some of the process that went into creating his latest film and why he was keen to tell this story of modern love…

Lighton, who received an Adapted Screenplay nomination for Pillion, says spending time with people within the scene he was putting on screen was important to understand the relationship nuances involved.

He says: “I was familiar with parts of the scene but then I also wanted to do all sorts of research beyond my own experience, so I met various couples in Dom-sub relationships of varying degrees of strictness. That gave me a clear understanding of the variety of relationship models built around this kink dynamic, lots of which follow strict ethical codes and contracts, but I wanted Ray and Colin’s relationship to be heightened and ethically ambiguous.

“Bringing on the Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club (GBMC) and members of the London kink scene during filming provided another layer of research. They became my key resource on set when it came to the details of the sex scenes, motorbike gear, etc.”

As a writer and director Lighton was curious to take a different approach to the usual queer narrative arc and show audiences something different with Pillion.

He explains: “I was interested in reversing the arc you get in queer narratives where a child is initially at odds with their parents about their sexuality and then at the end they come to a point of understanding. I thought it would be interesting to start from a point of exaggerated support, with Colin’s mum literally shoving him towards men, and then see that support withdrawn when the relationship Colin chooses doesn’t meet her definition of a healthy, gay relationship.”

One thing that Lighton wanted from his latest film was to show a story on screen that spoke to a wide audience and showed the similarities we have even in our differences.

He explains: “In obvious ways Colin’s experience of first love in the film is atypical, but navigating sexual ignorance with a more experienced partner or discovering how to articulate your wants in a relationship – those are very common experiences. We all require experience in order to go forward into future relationships with a better understanding of our boundaries. So, I think there’s something in it for anyone.”

*Harry Lighton was speaking as part of a special screening and Q&A at BAFTA 195 Piccadilly at the end of 2025 in the runup to Film Awards season.