Director Paul Andrew Williams on returning to EIFF with intense new film Dragonfly: ‘Brenda Blethyn was up for anything’

“It was mind-blowing,” recalls the director now. “In a way it was like, ‘What’s going on?’ Because we’d come from nowhere.”

On a Zoom call ahead of the EIFF premiere of his new film Dragonfly, Williams isn’t exaggerating with this last statement. Made on a shoestring with a cast of unknowns, London to Brighton arrived at that year’s event with zero awareness, yet it turned out to be a properly auspicious debut: one that subverted expectations by rooting its genre elements in the raw, social-realist traditions of Mike Leigh and John Cassavetes, but was also shot through with the sort relentless tension you might find in The Terminator (James Cameron is one of Williams’s filmmaking heroes). He ended up leaving the festival with a best director award and a raft of five-star reviews, including from this critic (it remains the best debut I’ve encountered at EIFF).

“We actually had a little screening of it the other day,” says Williams when I ask how he feels about it now that he’s had nearly 20 years’ perspective on it. “You know what's good about it? You never get that freedom again where nobody's waiting for it, nobody’s expecting anything of it. You’re literally in a position where you're going: ‘F*** it; we’re all in the same boat; it’s everyone's first movie; let’s just see what we can do and be as truthful as possible.’ It really was a good moment. And I'm very grateful, because it obviously changed my life.”

Though he admits he had no idea how to navigate the industry following London to Brighton’s reception — “I had a massive case of imposter syndrome” — he’s got no regrets about his subsequent career, which has allowed him to make six movies, write and direct a play in London’s West End and direct TV like Broadchurch and the recent Disney+ miniseries Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Indeed, TV is where he’s mostly been working over the last decade, though he did make a forceful return to cinema with 2021’s horror-adjacent gangster thriller Bull. Now he’s back with Dragonfly, which reconfirms his status as one of the most exciting British filmmakers currently working.

Starring Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn, it’s certainly among the best things he’s done, an unnerving, quietly terrifying drama about loneliness, connection and prejudice wrapped up in a story about two women finding each other at the right — or perhaps wrong — moment. Blethyn plays Elsie, an older woman who’s been living by herself in her bungalow, but has recently had a fall and now has her daily needs attended to by overworked private carers paid for by her absent, guilt-ridden son (Jason Watkins). Riseborough is her mysterious neighbour Colleen, an oddball from the West Country, with off-kilter energy and an enormous, frightening, mixed-breed dog called Sabre.

Suspicious of everyone, but especially of the parade of carers doing the bare minimum to help Elsie out, Colleen takes on the job of looking after Elsie herself, insinuating her way into her life and gradually forming a bond that’s quite sweet and funny and almost childlike in places, and almost like a romance in others. “Yeah, I’d call it a romance,” nods Williams.

The air of dread never quite subsides, though. As Williams gives us more and more glimpses into Colleen’s isolated existence, he demonstrates again that knack for infusing realistic drama with genre elements, deftly navigating plot turns here that take us into psycho-thriller or even horror territory. And in fact, there’s a pretty effective jump scare late on that would give Ari Aster a run for his money.

“It does have a jump scare,” laughs Williams. “It was mad watching it with an audience. I had no idea it would have that effect. But it is all grounded for me in reality. And I think our own preconceptions influence the horror of what's going on, because you see the dog and you're like, ‘That dog's gonna rip someone's head off.’ Our preconceptions generate fear and I think the same goes for Andrea’s character.”

It’s certainly a remarkable performance from Riseborough. She inhabits Colleen so completely you don’t really know what the character is capable of — and yet there’s a real vulnerability to her too that Riseborough makes sure to let us see. As for the character’s West Country accent, Williams wrote Colleen with that in mind, but didn’t specify it in the screenplay and was delighted when Riseborough showed up with the same idea.

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She was, confirms Williams, impressive to watch on set. Ditto Blethyn, who gives real dignity to Elsie as she endures the indignity of ageing with on-the-clock strangers showering her, preparing her meals and taking her to the bathroom. “Brenda was up for anything. She went from being in Vera, being the star of this very lucrative and popular show, to sitting in a dressing gown and nightie in the back room of a bungalow with an oil heater and a mirror. And that was it.”

Though Williams started writing Dragonfly during Covid as a way of figuring out if it was ever going to be possible to make a film again, the conversations about isolation and community that emerged during lockdown fed into the film. It’s not an issue movie, but he hopes it’ll open up a broader conversation about our roles in society. “Elsie is based on my nan and has elements of my mum; Colleen has lots of elements of things that have happened to me that I relate to very clearly,” he says. “But I just wanted to sort of write this thing where it's just these two people getting on, and then we subvert that and question our preconceptions about who these people are. I think there are people in this we could all do with paying attention to a bit more without judging.”

Dragonfly receives its UK premiere at the Cameo Cinema, 16 August, 9.30pm as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival and will go on general release in November. www.edfilmfest.org

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