Exclusive Interview: “Pillion” filmmaker Harry Lighton

“I wanted to upturn people’s expectations of what a BDSM film could be.”

Pillion filmmaker Harry Lighton at The Leather Man in New York City. Photo credit: Mettie Ostrowski for The Queer Review.

The alleyway scene you mentioned is brilliant—
intense, hot and funny–with a Tom of Finland fantasy vibe to it. 

Unless you’ve been living in a BDSM dungeon for the past few months (no judgements here), you will no doubt have seen dreamboat daddy Alexander Skarsgård dominating red carpets around the globe with leather and fetish flourishes (“kinky in the front, kinkier in the back”, is how Vogue described his BFI London ensemble) since his latest film Pillion received its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Set in present-day British suburbia, writer-director Harry Lighton’s stunning debut feature sees Skarsgård star as a mysterious Gay biker, Ray, who takes on the unassuming and inexperienced Colin (Harry Melling) as his submissive, drawing him into an intoxicating Dom/sub relationship, that’s depicted with both authenticity and nuance.

In this exclusive conversation, Harry Lighton speaks with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about what enticed him to adapt Adam Mars-Jones’ novel, why he incorporated real members of the Kink and Gay biker communities in the film, what excited him about pairing Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård, his approach to depicting the Dom/sub sex scenes, and why he thinks British actress Miriam Margulies is the ultimate Queer icon.

The epic unzipping of Ray’s leather pants in the alleyway scene is truly cinematic. I believe it takes up about a page in the book.

“It’s definitely a very detailed moment in the book and in the script I put all the letters running down the page vertically:
U
N
Z
I
P
S
so that it took up an entire page, because I knew that I wanted it to feel like it was a really decisive moment in that scene. We found the perfect zip for his leathers, but trying to find the right zip noise took ages. A zip which actually sounds sexy is not an easy thing to find on sound libraries, but we got there in the end.”

READ THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW

Published: 15th March 2026

Categorised in: News