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Elisa Giudici

With Cannes a week behind us, a look at my own personal favourites, and who would have won each prize if I were the sole juror.

Despite my overall disappointment with the 78th edition, there were strong films. Óliver Laxe's Sirât was a breathtaking piece of cinema, a true original that dared to be different. Its unpredictable narrative and masterful execution made it a highlight. Otherwise, my personal affection lies with Pillion, a film that managed to be both provocative and deeply insightful about the nature of love and vulnerability, wrapped in a rom-com-gone-rogue package...

Cornerstone has closed a slew of new territorial deals for Harry Lighton’s Cannes official selection Pillion after the film sold to A24 for the U.S. market.

The kinky romancer that launched at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section has been sold to Weltkino (Germany, Austria), iWonder (Italy), Praasens (Switzerland), McF (the territory formerly known as Yugoslavia), Gutek (Poland), Lusomondo (Portugal), New Cinema (Israel) and Diamond for Latin America.

Described as a “funny, filthy romance,” Pillion sees Skarsgard play Ray, an ”impossibly handsome leader of a bike gang” who takes on Colin (Melling), a weedy wallflower, to be his new submissive. Ray uproots Colin from his dreary suburban life and introduces him to a community of kinky, queer bikers. But as Colin dives deeper into Ray’s world, he begins to question whether the life of a 24/7 submissive is really for him.

Lighton, who makes...

UK drama Pillion, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, has sold to more international territories for Cornerstone Films, including iWonder forItaly and Weltkino forGermany and Austria.

Harry Lighton’s queer romance has also closed deals with Praesens (Switzerland), McF (ex-Yugoslavia), Gutek (Poland), Lusomundo (Portugal), New Cinema (Israel), Sun/ Diamond (Latin America), Transformers (Japan), Challan (South Korea) and Swallow Wings (Taiwan).

Pillion picked up the best screenplay award in Un Certain Regard. It stars Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgard as two men who enter into a dominant-submissive relationship.

A24 is releasing the title in the US while Picturehouse has UK-Ireland rights.

Cornerstone Films has secured a raft of international distribution deals for Harry Lighton’s “Pillion,” following the film’s acclaimed run at the Cannes Film Festival.

In the film, Colin, a timid man is swept off his feet when Ray, an enigmatic, impossibly handsome biker takes him on as his submissive. The film stars Harry Melling as Colin and and Emmy and Golden Globe winner Alexander Skarsgard as Ray.

The LGBTQ+ drama, which premiered in the Cannes Un Certain Regard section, earned Lighton the Un Certain Regard Award for best screenplay and received glowing reviews from critics. Reviewing the film for Variety, Peter Debruge wrote: “Laced with a wry sense of humor, ‘Pillion’ manages to be both understated and explicit in the way Lighton presents practically everything that happens in Colin and Ray’s unconventional relationship.”

Cornerstone has closed deals with distributors across multiple territories, including Weltkino (Germany and Austria...

Last year, in IndieWire’s 2024 Cannes Critics Survey, there was startling unanimity, with Sean Baker’s “Anora” winning Best Film, Best Screenplay, and Best Director. The 2025 Critics Poll couldn’t be less unanimous, with different films topping each of those categories this time. (Read the IndieWire’s staff’s own picks for the best films of Cannes 2025 here.) Even though the 48 critics who voted, representing four continents, largely overlapped with those who voted last year (see Page 2 for the list of all who participated), they seemed insistent upon spreading the wealth this time. For instance, Bi Gan’s “Resurrection” topped the Best Director voting, without appearing at all on the Best Film or Best Screenplay lists.

Best Film in this 2025 edition of the Cannes Critics Survey went to Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât,” the French-Spanish co-production filmed in Morocco about a father searching for his daughter, who goes missing while attending...

The 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival has now concluded, with Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident taking home the Palme d’Or (see all jury winners here). While our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this week––and far beyond as we provide updates on the journey of these selections––we’ve asked our contributors on the ground to share favorites.

See their picks below, and explore all of our coverage here.

Leonardo Goi (@LeonardoGoi)

1. Sirat (Oliver Laxe)

2. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski)

3. The Last One For The Road (Francesco Sossai)

4. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)

5. Resurrection (Bi Gan)

6. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)

7. Heads or Tails (Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis)

8. Lucky Lu (Lloyd Lee Choi)

9. Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa)

10. Mirrors No. 3 (Christian Petzold)

Read all of Leonardo’s reviews here.

Luke Hicks (@lou_hicks)

1. Sirat (Oliver Laxe...

The red carpet is rolling up at the 78th Cannes Film Festival and the top honor, the coveted Palme d’Or has been awarded to Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, edging out favorite Sentimental Value, as well as films by Richard Linklater (Nouevelle Vogue), Ari Aster (Eddington), Wes Anderson (The Phoenician Scheme), Kelly Reichardt (The Mastermind) and two-time Palme d’Or winners the Dardenne brothers (Young Mothers).

Of note, It Was Just an Accident is the first film with (partly) Iranian backing since Abbas Kiarostami’s remarkable A Taste of Cherry 1997 co-win to take home to Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The film tells of a minor accident that yields consequences that none of the parties could foresee. Director Jafar Panahi has been highly critical of his home country of Iran, facing numerous arrests and even facing charges of propaganda. In his acceptance speech,...

And the wins keep on coming for Neon. But also for Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, currently in exile from his home country of Iran for how he’s voiced opposition through his cinema. This includes his latest film and now Palme d’Or winner, “It Was Just an Accident,” a moral thriller that finds five dissidents debating whether or not to murder their former torturer.

In IndieWire’s review out of Cannes, David Ehrlich said of the film, “From the plot description alone, it’s obvious that ‘It Was Just an Accident’ finds Panahi working in a very different register than he had to while “banned” from making films — a period that saw his long-standing penchant for metafiction become considerably more pronounced, as he was forced to make himself the subject of iPhone/camcorder masterpieces like ‘This Is Not a Film.’ This one still had to be shot in secret...

Yes, Cannes is still rolling. And no, the Palme d’Or winner has not been crowned (that’ll come later Saturday). Cannes has been going on for so long that “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” a film that screened early in the festival, is now playing on thousands of screens worldwide. But let’s get into the happenings before this year’s festival finally closes out.

Un Certain Regard Regarded

Everyone is always in a tizzy over what will get Cannes’ big award, the Palme d’Or, but just as interesting (perhaps more so) is the competition for the Un Certain Regard, which is run in parallel to the main competition. The goal of Un Certain Regard, which was introduced in 1998, is to give a spotlight to unusual films that take narrative or stylistic risks. And this year was no different.

This year’s top prize winner was “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,...

Before the Palme d’Or gets dished out and after power cuts took down the town’s electricity for a day, Cannes was abuzz with the burning question: qui a gagné le Palm Dog? The answer came yesterday afternoon at a star-studded-collar event on the beach at The Members Club. In a woof-and-ready ceremony, jury member Peter Bradshaw noted that 25 films had come under consideration for this year’s honors, pointing out that some were made by directors who hadn’t even been born when the event first took place at the UK Pavilion back in 2000.

• The top prize — The Palm Dog itself — went to sheepdog Panda, for her part in a film directed by her owner: The Love That Remains, Hlynur Pálmason’s tragicomic, gentle family saga.

• Mutt Moment — for the year’s best scene-stealer — went to the British Un Certain Regard film Pillion for its long-haired Dachshund Hippo and Rottweiler Rosie.

Gold Derby's top news stories for May 23, 2025.

The Wheel of Time canceled after three seasons on Prime Video

Amazon has canceled fantasy series The Wheel of Time after three seasons. The series, which premiered on Prime Video in 2021, was based on the popular novel series by Robert Jordan, and featured a large ensemble cast led by Rosamund Pike. The third season made Nielsen's top 10 list of streaming originals, but the renewal bar is high for expensive fantasy series.

Cannes' Un Certain Regard winners revealed

The 2025 winners of the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, which honors early career filmmakers, have been revealed. La misteriosa mirada del flamenco (The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo), the debut feature of Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes, won the top Un Certain Regard Prize. Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto won the second-place Jury Prize with his film Un Poeta (A Poet). Palestinian...

Ahead of the 2025 awards ceremony on Saturday, May 24, the festival has announced the winners for the Un Certain Regard section, with the top prize going to “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo.” A co-production between Chile, France, Belgium, Spain, and Germany, the 1980s-set drama marks the feature directorial debut of Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes.

The Best Screenplay award for the Un Certain Regard section went to Harry Lighton for his feature directorial debut, A24’s “Pillion,” starring Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård. In his Critic’s Pick review out of Cannes, IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio said of the film, “Dick-sucking, boot-licking, and ball-gagging are de rigueur for a movie like writer/director Harry Lighton’s wildly graphic and strangely moving Bdsm romance, ‘Pillion.’ But for a British queer film that puts the particulars of a gay dominant-submissive affair up front and up close, actors Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling find...

The 2025 Cannes Film Festival came at precarious moment in the history of cinema, yet still managed to revel in the splendors this art form can provide. While the annual international event may be coming to a close, it leaves behind a bevy of gems that will continue to be discussed throughout the year and may even land on the Oscars stage in 2026, as was the case with Sean Baker’s 2024 Palme d’Or winner, “Anora.” But before all that, there still remains the important act of closing out the festivities with the ever-important awards ceremony.

Predicting the Palme d’Or recipient has become a cherished pastime for fans and critics alike, but as is the case every year, the final decision rests in the hands of the Main Competition jury. This year it’s led by French actress and current European Film Academy president Juliette Binoche, and also includes Halle Berry,...

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, Chilean writer-director Diego Céspedes’ AIDS bigotry drama and feature debut, spotlighted by THR as a festival gem, has claimed the top prize in the Cannes Film Festival’s 2025 Un Certain Regard competition.

The winning drama, set in the 1980s, portrays a small mining town in Chile where an unknown illness spreads and gay men are accused of transmitting it with their gaze. That leaves Lydia, an 11 year-old girl, to find out the truth. The Un Certain Regard competition winners were revealed in an awards ceremony in the Debussy Theatre on Friday.

Other honorees included A Poet, by Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto, taking home the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize for the drama about a failed poet mentoring a talented, young woman. The best director prize went to Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser for Once Upon a Time in Gaza, a Palestinian crime thriller...

Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze Of The Flamingo has won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival (May 13-24).

The Chilean drama centres around an unknown illness said to be transmitted through a man’s loving gaze. Chile’s Quijote Films and France’s Les Valseurs produce, with Charades handling sales.

The jury prize went to Simon Mesa Soto’s A Poet. Shot in Medellin, Colombia, it follows an ageing man obsessed with poetry who mentors a talented teenage girl.

Best screenplay went to Harry Lighton for Pillion, starring Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård.

Chilean Drama The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo by Diego Céspedes won the main Un Certain Regard Prize this evening in Cannes.

Set in 1982, the film follows eleven-year-old Lidia lives with her beloved queer family in a desert mining town in northern Chile. As an unknown and deadly disease begins to spread, legend has it that it is transmitted between two men, through a simple glance, when they fall in love. While people are accusing her family, Lidia must find out whether this myth is real or not.

A Poet, by Colombian filmmaker Simón Mesa Soto, won the Jury Prize. The film is Soto’s second feature, and it follows Oscar Restrepo, whose obsession with poetry brought him no glory. Aging and erratic, he has succumbed to the cliché of the poet in the shadows. Meeting Yurlady, a teenage girl from humble roots, and helping her cultivate her talent brings some light to his days,...

Diego Céspedes’ “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo” has been named the best film of the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, the Ucr jury announced on Friday.

The film follows an 11-year-old girl growing up in the early 1980s in a queer family in a small Chilean mining town, where suspicion is growing over a mysterious disease that is rumored to be spread by glances between gay men.

Simón Mesa Soto’s “A Poet” won the Jury Prize, the second-place award.

The directing award went to Tarzan and Arab Nasser for “Once Upon a Time in Gaza,” while Cléo Diara and Frank Dillane won the performance prizes for “I Only Rest in the Storm” and “Urchin,” respectively. Writer-director Harry Lighton won the screenplay award for “Pillion.”

Un Certain Regard focuses on films from younger directors and often spotlights experimental work. This year, Ucr was also the...

The Cannes Film Festival’s second-most prestigious competition, Un Certain Regard, is typically dominated by newer, less heralded names in world cinema. But there was more star power than usual at stake in this year’s awards ceremony, as pundits wondered whether one of the three debut features by prominent actors-turned-directors in this year’s lineup — Kristen Stewart, Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson — could land a prize.

As it turned out, people needn’t have worried about a Hollywood takeover. Stewart’s “The Chronology of Water” and Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great” both went unawarded, as the jury threw a relative curveball in handing the Prix Un Certain Regard to Chilean director Diego Céspedes for his alluringly titled first feature “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” an offbeat study of a transgender commune living in the Chilean desert around the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

The film...

A24 is shutting down its documentary filmmaking department with five people departing from that division, Variety has confirmed.

Headed by Nicole Stott, the division has produced recent docs including “Look Into My Eyes,” “The Last of the Sea Women,” “The Sixth” and Morgan Neville’s Steve Martin documentary “Steve!”

Stott and Emily Osborne, head of documentary production, will remain at A24 long enough to complete work on ongoing projects.

Non-fiction projects that are already finished or in production, such as “André Is an Idiot” and “Architecton” will continue to be handled by A24. The same goes for other projects still in production such as the Philippou brothers’ wrestling doc “Deathmatch” and “The Yogurt Shop Murders.”

The company is not ruling out working with filmmakers on further documentary projects, but the market has become too challenging to support an entire division, sources indicated.

A documentary filmmaker who did want to be...

On a shaded rooftop above the Croisette, Stellan Skarsgård deflected praise for his performance in Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” a rare Cannes consensus pick.

“Proud?” he told IndieWire quietly, rolling the word with audible distaste. “I’m not usually proud of things. I don’t know about that. Joachim’s way of working is very special, very beautiful, and quite brave. And it fucking works. That’s good.”

In the film, Skarsgård plays Gustav Borg, a once-lauded arthouse director who abandoned his wife and daughters in pursuit of his career. Fifteen years have passed since his last film, and longer still since his last success. Now, he’s written a screenplay exploring his emotional distance from his family and his mother’s suicide, centred on a role he wants his estranged daughter Nora, played by “The Worst Person in the World” star Renate Reinsve, to take on.

Cinephiles may recognise Gustav Borg’s type,...

Harry Lighton’s film Pillion is based on the novel Box Hill so, misgivings riding alongside, it felt right for the author to motorbike to the film festival for its premiere

I set out on my motorbike for Cannes on the morning of 16 May, a distance of about 450 miles, having booked a room in Montpellier so as to break the journey and take my own sweet time. It’s not often that anyone’s books are the basis of a “queer biker movie” premiering at the only film festival everyone has heard of, let alone one of mine – I felt I owed it to myself to make an entrance in style.

Harry Lighton’s film Pillion is based on my novel Box Hill, published in 2020. When the option was acquired I didn’t see how a consciously disorienting first-person narrative could work on the screen, but I was happy for him to try.

BBC Film director Eva Yates had the right idea about the after-party for Joachim Trier’s exquisitely realised film Sentimental Value: Do not dilly-dally. Get in there, play the room, then scoot.

“We’re off to sit at the kitchen table and talk about films,” Yates declares as she and two colleagues greet me whilst I’m still in line waiting to get into the soiree, or whatever it was, at the casino nightclub Silencio conveniently located next door to the Palais des Festivals.

Yates was one of several executive producers attached to Sentimental Value, which Neon has in the U.S. and Mubi in the U.K.,Ireland, Latin America, Turkey and India. The BBC Film topper has had a good festival with Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow, Harry Lighton’s Pillion and Harris Dickinson’s Urchin also included in this year’s official selection.

She was off and away,...

With lots of kinky gay Bdsm sex scenes, elaborately choreographed orgies, full-frontal nudity and men in rubber, “Pillion” has easily been among the most sexually graphic films of Cannes so far (and also one of its most warmly received).

But it turns out the festival cut of the unorthodox romance — which screened in the Un Certain Regard section — was a mere bagatelle compared to what could have been shown.

According to first-time director Harry Lighton, several scenes from the film — about a meek young man (Harry Melling) who becomes the sexual submissive to a tall domineering alpha male biker (Alexander Skarsgard) — were cut to spare the blushes of the crowd in Cannes.

“It was purely because I didn’t want to push the audience into feeling they were being deliberately shocked by an image,” he explains to Variety. “So for example, there was one close up of a dick, a...

Alexander Skarsgard is once again turning heads on the red carpet at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival!

The 48-year-old Emmy-winning actor stepped out for the premiere of Eagles Of The Republic on Monday (May 19) held at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France.

For the premiere, Alexander wore a wild pair of blue sequined pants paired with a gray blazer and a pink bow time.

Alexander attended the premiere with his Pillion co-star Harry Melling.

The day before, Alexander made his presence known at the premiere of The Phoenician Scheme by wearing a pair of thigh-high leather boots.

Alexander recently revealed that he waxed his entire body for his new Apple TV+ series Murderbot, but admitted that he now regrets it.

Fyi: Alexander is wearing a Magliano blazer and Bianca Saunders pants.

Click through the gallery inside for 10+ pictures of Alexander Skarsgard on the red carpet…...

Alexander Skarsgard is a successful actor who is on an impressive Rotten Tomatoes streak. After receiving a perfect debut score for Murderbot, his new Apple TV+ series, Skarsgard achieved a rare career win by adding a different title in less than a week.

His latest film, the romance Pillion, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18 to huge acclaim. The drama, which follows a Bdsm relationship between a gay biker and a timid parking attendant, enjoyed an eight-minute standing ovation from the audience, per Deadline. As reviews started coming in, Pillion debuted with a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Pillion marks Harry Lighton's directorial debut. The filmmaker also wrote the script for the drama, which is based on Adam Mars-Jones' 2020 novel, Box Hill. The cast features Harry Potter star Harry Melling in the leading role, as well as Douglas Hodge, Lesley Sharp, Jake Shears, and Anthony Welsh. The...

Sales, Godard and Wes Anderson, oh my! Sunday at Cannes was packed with action, from the premiere of a new Wes Anderson movie to the first major sale of the festival. Let’s get going.

Wes Anderson’s latest

Wes Anderson brought the cast of his new film “The Phoenician Scheme” to France, and while the ensemble only featured a few newcomers – namely Mia Threapleton (Kate Winslet’s daughter) and Michael Cera – most critics agreed that the idiosyncratic filmmaker has brought something fresh to the table: a tale about capitalism. Benicio del Toro stars as the wealthiest man in Europe who tries to get his soon-to-be-nun daughter in on his latest scheme, hence the title.

In his review for TheWrap, William Bibbiani made note that while the film is very much in keeping with Anderson’s established aesthetic and style, “The Phoenician Scheme” is “a huge departure.”

“He hasn’t...

One can only marvel at Nicole Kidman’s astuteness. The actress and producer wanted to know where I was scooting off to after the Kering/Festival de Cannes Women in Motion dinner Sunday night. When I started to tell her about the afterparty for Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow, her eyes lit up.

“That’s one of the hits of the festival, right? First-time director, shot in Nigeria, right?”

Kidman then proceeded to quiz me about the movie and the filmmaker siblings Akinola and Wale Davies, who penned the script together.

She would’ve loved the party on the beach thrown jointly for My Father’s Shadow and Harry Lighton’s biker romance Pillion.

During his presentation to Kidman, Cannes fest chief Thierry Frémaux hailed her as the “Barefoot Queen of Cannes” because of her propensity to whip off her heels whenever possible. “Yeah, but you’re not allowed to do that now,...

It wouldn’t be Cannes without a good scandal film. For 2025, British director Harry Lighton’s feature debut Pillion may be the one that sends the most people clutching their pearls. Centered on a dom-sub relationship within the gay biker milieu, it features depictions of fetishistic sex acts that could trigger a few sensitive souls. It would be a shame, however, if all attention is directed at the kinks and shocks––Lighton has made a truly provocative anti-romance that’s funny, honest, strangely touching. It’s an exceptional balance act that makes Pillion the unlikeliest crowd-pleaser.

Colin (Harry Melling) is a meek, scrawny young man still living with his parents and struggling to find love. It’s Christmas and we see him singing carols at the pub where his mother has set up a date. It isn’t going well, but at some point Colin meets the mysterious, improbably handsome biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) who,...

Pedro Pascal has a chokehold on pop culture, and honestly, we’re not complaining. We loved him in The Mandalorian and The Last of Us, and every day there’s a new TikTok edit of him, so clearly, the internet’s obsession with Pascal has only increased.

But just when we thought that netizens couldn’t have another meltdown over the actor, a moment at Cannes has sent everyone ablaze. So let’s take a look at the actor’s affectionate encounter with Alexander Skarsgård and then his dating life.

Alexander Skarsgård kisses Pedro Pascal at Cannes Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us | Credits: HBO

The Cannes Film Festival is full of unforgettable moments, from red carpet entrances to phenomenal movies that are praised by everyone. But what happened during the premiere of Pillion on May 18, 2025, was extraordinary and one of the most-talked-about interactions from the event.

Related: Dakota Johnson...

Harry Lighton’s debut feature, Pillion, adapts Adam Mars-Jones’s 2020 novella Box Hill into a modern, unflinching exploration of desire and self-discovery. Set in suburban Bromley, the film follows Colin (Harry Melling), a reserved traffic warden whose predictable life—marked by barbershop quartet rehearsals and family dinners—tilts on its axis when he encounters Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), a stoic biker with a penchant for leather and instruction.

Their chance meeting at a pub leads Colin down a path of submission, in which he finds unexpected strength through consent-based power exchange. Lighton unfolds this narrative with a tone that balances tenderness and eroticism, punctuated by moments of sharp humour.

Colin’s journey from introspective novice to self-assured participant carries the emotional weight of the story, while Ray’s measured authority conceals deeper vulnerabilities. At its centre, Pillion probes how the act of yielding control can paradoxically grant agency, charting a path toward belonging beyond familiar routines.

Alexander Skarsgard is overcome with emotion!

The 48-year-old actor gave Pedro Pascal a hug and kiss on the cheek during what was described by THR as an “electric seven-minute standing ovation” for the 2025 Cannes Film Festival premiere of his movie, Pillion, on Sunday (May 18).

The Bsdm-themed queer film marks the directorial debut of Harry Lighton.

The movie centers around Colin, a shy London lad (Harry Melling), who encounters the smoldering and charismatic leader of a motorcycle club named Ray (Skarsgard) on Christmas Eve at a local pub. After a steamy oral sex session in an alleyway, Ray takes Colin under his wing by making Colin his submissive as they get tangled up in a relationship built around power dynamics.

Keep reading to find out more…

Pedro Pascal on his feet for standing ovation for Pillion and gets a hug and kiss from Alex Skarsgaard him on the great film. pic.

Pillion, about the Bdsm relationship between a gay biker and a timid parking attendant, kickstarted an exuberant eight-minute ovation from the audience that included Pedro Pascal after its premiere Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival.

The kinky pic from British first-time feature writer-director Harry Lighton follows the burgeoning odd-couple pairing of the handsome and charismatic Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) and introverted but curious Colin (Harry Melling). The biker gang leader introduces Colin to his community and takes him on as his sexual submissive.

Related: Standing Ovations At Cannes: How We Clock Those Claps, Which Movie Holds The Record and Why The Industry Loves To Hate The Ritual

In his Deadline review, Glenn Garner wrote: “Beneath the unabashed sexual content, Lighton’s debut is all romance, kicking off with a French rendition of ‘I Will Follow Him,’ foreshadowing the hopeless devotion Colin develops for Ray in their dom/sub relationship. … Skarsgård understood the assignment,...

Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling play unlikely lovers in this sweet and extremely revealing first time drama from Harry Lighton, adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’ Box Hill

Here to prove there’s nothing gentle about true love is an intensely English story of romance, devotion and loss from first-time feature director Harry Lighton, who has created something funny and touching and alarming – like a cross between Alan Bennett and Tom of Finland with perhaps a tiny smidgen of what could be called a Bdsm Wallace and Gromit. It’s basically what Fifty Shades of Grey should have been.

Pillion is adapted from the 2020 novel Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones: a shy traffic enforcement officer falls for the ultimate dominant alpha male – an impossibly handsome, strong, emotionally impassive biker who casually demands complete domestic obedience in exchange for the privilege of being reamed with athletic vigour and thrilling lack of sensitivity,...

Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling brought a healthy splash of Bdsm to Cannes on Sunday with the premiere of Harry Lighton’s “Pillion” in the Un Certain Regard section.

The film earned a hugely enthusiastic seven-minute standing ovation and, in perhaps a Cannes first, saw Skarsgard hug a man dressed in a dog-like rubber mask (which Variety has since learned is a “pup hood”) as the audience whooped and cheered. Skarsgard was dressed for the occasion, wearing leather trousers (which he proudly flaunted on stage).

Before the screening, Lighton said he wanted the film “to make you laugh, make you think, make you feel and make you horny.”

Marking Lighton’s feature directorial debut, “Pillion” follows “Colin (Melling), a weedy wallflower letting life pass him by,” its official synopsis reads. “That is until Ray (Skarsgård), the impossibly handsome leader of a motorbike club, takes him on as his submissive. Ray...

Dick-sucking, boot-licking, and ball-gagging are de rigueur for a movie like writer/director Harry Lighton’s wildly graphic and strangely moving Bdsm romance, “Pillion.” But for a British queer film that puts the particulars of a gay dominant-submissive affair up front and up close, actors Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling find the sweet center of a story marked by clamps, cages, and assless unitards. No doubt comparisons will arise to another A24 movie, “Babygirl,” which last year put Nicole Kidman on all fours, crying out to Harris Dickinson that “I’m gonna pee!” when actually she was just having an orgasm with another person for the first time.

Lighton, adapting Adam Mars-Jones’ book “Box Hill,” really does take us there in the delightful “Pillion,” with Skarsgård getting more emotionally naked than ever and almost physically more than he ever got as Eric Northman on TV’s “True Blood.” But not without,...

Where do kinks come from? Are we each born to seek out certain thrills, or are such illicit appetites unlocked through experience? Sigmund Freud had a few theories on the subject, and so does Harry Lighton’s “Pillion,” a steamy art-house psychodrama that’s fairly light on analysis but not at all shy about showing the germ of one man’s titillating new turn-on. Named for the person who sits on the back of a motorcycle, arms wrapped around the driver’s waist, “Pillion” focuses on a nascent submissive discovering what his butch new biker boyfriend describes as “an aptitude for devotion.”

A mild-mannered traffic warden who still lives at home, Colin (Harry Melling) is on a blind date arranged by none other than his mum when he spots what could be the man of his dreams. Dressed in a full leather riding suit, Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) is everything that pale,...

Cannes – Let me be the first, perhaps second, possibly third critic to refer to Harry Lighton’s directorial debut, “Pillion,” as the gay flip side of “Babygirl.” Subject matter aside, it’s a movie with somewhat higher aspirations than its A24 stablemate. It’s a beast of sexual power dynamics and unrequited intimacy all on its own. And it may make even the most liberal viewer uncomfortable in the best way possible.

Continue reading ‘Pillion’ Review: Harry Melling & Alexander Skarsgård Find Unexpected Feeling In The Role Play [Cannes] at The Playlist.

In his feature directorial debut Pillion, writer-director Harry Lighton sets a beautifully heartbreaking love story against a modern world of Bdsm.

Based on the 2020 novel Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones, Pillion stars Harry Melling as a timid young gay man named Colin who comes into his sexuality when a biker named Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) takes him on as his sexual submissive.

A new kinkier Christmas classic for LGBTQ fans of Carol and Tangerine, Christmas carols over the piano with family are followed by an anonymous alleyway blowjob with a hot stranger, perhaps a familiar experience for one too many (or not enough) gay men going home for the holidays. In this case, Colin eagerly licks up the mud off Ray’s boots when told to, all within the first 20 minutes of the movie.

Another erotic scene includes some ass-less wrestling singlets before the pair experiences an unfortunately common plumbing issue that comes with anal sex,...

When it came to actors revealing their tricks to playing the heavy-duty melodrama of a husband and wife on the edge, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson had nothing to hold back in their discussion of their portrayals in Die My Love.

Lynne Ramsay’s film stars Lawrence as Grace, a young mother battling severe post-natal mental illness, which takes a toll on her marriage to Jackson (Robert Pattinson), leading to his infidelity. Increasing the melodrama is the fact that they’ve moved from the city to Middle of Nowhere, California.

Die My Love reps the seventh time that Ramsay has been in Cannes, her pinnacle being 2017, when she took home Best Screenplay for the psychedelic Joaquin Phoenix mercenary thriller You Were Never Really Here.

At this morning’s Cannes presser for the film, Lawrence revealed she was around five months pregnant when she shot the role.

Jennifer Lawrence on her...

Alexandre Mallet-Guy’s Memento has bought Harry Lighton’s sexy romance “Pillion” which is world premiering in Un Certain Regard.

The Paris-based Memento, which is at Cannes with three movies in competition, will release the A24 movie in France. Speaking to Variety, Mallet Guy said, “It’s a gay Bdsm rom-com, and it’s pretty wild.”

“Alexander Skarsgård plays the biker, and Harry Melling, who you might know from ‘Harry Potter,’ plays the submissive. The film is hilarious but also quite disturbing, simply because it’s a romantic comedy set in such a specific, unconventional world. But it really works — it’s surprisingly emotional, and there’s something incredible about seeing two stars take such bold risks,” he added.

Memento’s Cannes competition lineup includes Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Jafar Panahi’s “A Simple Accident” and Tarik Saleh’s “Eagles of the Republic,” as well as Laura Wandel’s...

Exclusive:Cornerstone Films has closed key distribution deals, including Memento in France, for UK filmmaker Harry Lighton’s Un Certain Regard world premiere Pillion.

It has also sold to Canada (Photon), Spain (Madfer), Australia-New Zealand (Rialto), Baltics and Ukraine (Ad Astra) and Greece (Cinobo).

A24 will release in the US, Picturehouse in the UK and September Films in Benelux.

A timid man is swept off his feet when an enigmatic, impossibly handsome biker takes him on as his submissive. Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård star.

Element Pictures’ Emma Norton, Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe are producing together with Lee Groombridge,...

The British Film Institute (BFI) has unveiled the line-up of speakers and events taking place at the Cannes UK Pavilion, including a talent talk with Urchin filmmaker Harris Dickinson, as well as panel discussions on artificial intelligence, gender inclusivity and disability.

Dickinson, who starred in 2022 Palme d’Or winner Triangle Of Sadness, is playing in Un Certain Regard with his BFI and BBC Film-backed directorial debut, Urchin. Dickinson will be joined by director of photographyJosêe Deshaiesand producer Archie Pearch from Devisio Pictures.

Akinola Davies Jnr, whose BBC Film and BFI-backed feature debut My Father’s Shadowalso plays in Un Certain Regard,...

Over 200 UK independent producers have signed an open letter addressed to BBC Film and Film4, urging the UK’s leading public service broadcasters (PSBs) to “reaffirm their core responsibility to support UK producers and safeguard the future of the UK independent film industry”.

The letter has been compiled over the last 48 hours by producers’ organisation Producers Anonymous. The group says it was written after “growing alarm” over the backing by BBC Film and Film4 for separate Cannes Competition titles without a UK director or production company: Sentimental Value and The History Of Sound.

Read the letter to BBC Film and...

Two years after her debut “How to Have Sex” won Un Certain Regard’s top prize, British director, screenwriter and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker will be back at Cannes Film Festival to preside over the section’s jury.

Manning Walker will be joined by French-Swiss director and screenwriter Louise Courvoisier, who presented her film “Holy Cow” last year at Cannes; Vanja Kaludjercic, the Croatian director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam; Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini; and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (“Bpm Beats Per Minute”). Together, they will hand out the prizes for Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, which centers on films by young auteurs.

“It’s such an honor to return to Cannes as the president of the Un Certain Regard Jury,” Manning Walker said in a statement. “This selection will forever hold a special place in my heart. Being a part of it really changed my world. I...

Cannes Competition titlesSentimental Value, the sixth film from Danish-Norwegian director Joachim Trier, and The History Of Sound, also the sixth film by the acclaimed South African director Oliver Hermanus, have both secured funding from the UK public broadcasters, BBC Film and Film4 respectively.

The financial support from the UK public broadcasters has raisedthe eyebrows of some in the UK independent production community as neither film is directed by a UK filmmaker, has a UK production company, tells a UK story or was majority shot in the UK with a majority UK cast and crew.

As UK funding for independent film...

Cannes Competition titlesSentimental Value, the sixth film from Danish-Norwegian director Joachim Trier, and The History Of Sound, also the sixth film by the acclaimed South African director Oliver Hermanus, have both secured funding from the UK public broadcasters, BBC Film and Film4 respectively.

The financial support from the UK public broadcasters has raisedthe eyebrows of some in the UK independent production community as neither film is directed by a UK filmmaker, has a UK producer or co-producer, tells a UK story or was majority shot in the UK with a majority UK cast and crew.

As UK funding for independent...

Among the lineup for the Cannes Film Festival’s 78th edition are some big names from Hollywood and global cinema. We already knew that Tom Cruise will light the fuse on Paramount/Skydance’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning on May 14 out of competition, while there was plenty of speculation that Scarlett Johansson would have a pair of movies on the Croisette. The latter has now been confirmed with Johansson’s directorial debut Eleanor the Great set for Un Certain Regard, and her acting reteam with Wes Anderson in his latest, The Phoenician Scheme, in Competition. Also confirmed is Ari Aster’s Eddington with Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone.

Many more stars are potentially in store now that the bulk of the official selection has been revealed. Not everyone is confirmed to attend the Riviera shindig, but here’s a look at some of the possibilities.

Cannes...

Handing in their almost finished homework, we expect an extra of titles to be added to the sixteen titles that were unveiled today. The upcoming Un Certain Regard programme has eight feature debuts with notables in Harris Dickinson (Urchin) and Scarlett Johansson (Eleanor the Great) making the move behind the camera. Also in the newbie club we find the highly anticipated films by Morad Mostafa in Aisha Can’t Fly Away and Diego Céspedes‘ The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo. Charlie Polinger‘s The Plague, Akinola Davies Jr.‘s My Father’s Shadow (a Mubi pick-up), Zuzana Kirchnerová‘s Karavan and Harry Lighton’s Pillion – the A24 Kinky Queer Romance film starring Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling are also up for the Camera d’Or prize.…...

The Official Selection for the 78th Cannes Film Festival was revealed Thursday, with 19 movies in Competition. See full lists below.

Familiar names who will launch new works in the Competition include Wes Anderson, who brings his latest flick The Phoenician Scheme; Richard Linklater will launch his Paris-shot Nouvelle Vague; Jochim Trier debuts his latest feature Sentimental Value; and Titane Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau returns with Alpha.

Cannes will open this year with Leave One Day by first-time French filmmaker Amelie Bonnin. Thierry Frémaux said during his presser this morning that it was the first time a debut film has been selected to open the festival. Also hitting the Croisette for the first time is horror auteur Ari Aster, who returns to feature filmmaking with his buzzy A24 feature Eddington.

Related: Thierry Frémaux Talks ‘Mission: Impossible’; Star Presence; Hollywood Introspection & Oscar Track Record

Elsewhere, American filmmaker Kelly Reichardt will...

Ahead of the 78th Cannes Film Festival, taking place May 13 to 24, the lineup has now been unveiled. Iris Knobloch, President of the Festival de Cannes, and Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate, have revealed the slate this morning.

Highlights include Ari Aster’s Eddington, Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, Joachim Trier’s Sentimal Value, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, Julia Ducournau’s Alpha, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident, Carla Simon’s Romeria, and more. In other sections we have Rebecca Zlotowski’s Vie Privée, the directorial debuts of Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson, Michael Angelo Covino’s Splitsville, Sebastián Lelio’s The Wave, Sylvain Chomet’s The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol, and more.

See below.

In Competition

After (Oliver Laxe)

Alpha (Julia Ducournau)

The Eagles of the Republic (Tarik Saleh)

Eddington (Ari Aster)

Dossier 137 (Dominik Moll...