A lonely woman reconnects with a troubled figure from her past, with irreversible consequences.

Boys Like You is a quiet yet devastating drama about longing, regret, and the dangerous pull of unresolved pain. The film follows a woman who, feeling unfulfilled beyond her roles as wife and mother, becomes consumed by the need to reconnect with a troubled young man from her past. What begins as a search for meaning slowly reveals deeper wounds—ones shaped by loneliness, memory, and emotional displacement.

As the two characters gravitate toward each other, their shared vulnerability becomes both a comfort and a catalyst for tragedy. Boys Like You explores how isolation can distort judgment and how the desire to be seen can lead to irreversible choices. Grounded and emotionally raw, the film offers a haunting meditation on connection, consequence, and the fragile line between empathy and self-destruction.

Below, we speak with director Paul Holbrook about the emotional roots of Boys Like You and the choices that shaped its intimate, unsettling journey.

What first drew you to this story — and to the idea of exploring loneliness from both sides of the age and gender divide?

It was more the ‘class or culture divide’ that first attracted me to the project to be honest. I was interested in exploring how our allegiances in cinema or storytelling in general can sometimes be a bit pre-loaded and thought there was an interesting challenge in this story that could get under the skin of our audience.

Was there a specific image, conversation, or emotional truth that sparked Boys Like You?

Boys Like You is a very personal story to Lindsay, who also stars in the film, and her emotional openness to the poking and prodding I like to do in development led to a rewarding and enriching process of delivering the screenplay.

The film’s tension lies in the connection between two wounded souls — intimate yet uneasy. How did you navigate that delicate line between empathy and danger?

I was always very conscious of never wanting to lead the audience too much in regard to where I felt their empathies should lie. I wanted them to lean in, and as always FEEL something, and question come the end where those feelings came from, and whether they shifted along the way at all. Emotional truth is always the guiding light in all my films, and that isn’t something that should be owned by me personally, I am much more interesting in exploration of these truths, than I am dictating how others should feel. This was a shared mindset with the key creative team, and something that was always challenged where needed in the writing process too.

The story captures loneliness as something both haunting and humanizing. How did you approach visualizing isolation — through framing, silence, or pacing?

The pace in the edit was something we really focussed on, we knew we needed listening and thinking time, for both our characters and our audience, but there was a fine balance to be struck has always between indulgence, and pace. I’m really happy with how that balance was struck, and when we watch the film with a big audience, it’s really satisfying to feel the audience leaning in at all the right moments. Our DoP James Oldham had really specific ideas about lighting and framing that amplifies these moments.

Boys Like You refuses to give clear heroes or villains. How important was it for you to leave space for discomfort and ambiguity?

It’s the MOST important thing in this film, there are absolutely NO heroes or villains, but I think movie audiences almost subconsciously attribute these titles to characters in film, and I wanted to challenge them to ask why in this story that might have been. It’s been interesting hearing audiences thoughts and feelings about this, and the diversity of thoughts, empathies and compassions along the way.

The film’s final moments are carried by a powerful soundtrack and visceral cinematography. Can you talk about how sound and music helped intensify the emotional impact of the ending?

The contrast between happy and sad images, emotionally dramatic music, and the blanket of space this allowed, really feels like a sea of emotion whilst still allowing the audience the respite to think and feel. It was inspired by the “check ins” that Shane Meadows does so well in his films, especially how he uses Ludovico Einaudi in This Is England.

What are the books, podcasts or even YouTube Channel that you recommend young filmmakers to get their hands on?

I always tell young filmmakers to watch as many films as they can, and read as many scripts as possible, and to really evaluate WHY you like it, and WHY you think they work (or not). This is the same for watching your own work, I think it’s much more beneficial to explore what you didn’t quite get right, than celebrate what you did – this is where the best lessons are learned. As for books, so many now are just regurgitated and reframed lessons that have been shouted about for years and have become too broad for me. Read one, and you’ve learnt as much as if you’d read them all. I do think is hugely important for filmmakers to understand the value in a good script, and to learn why formatting and structure on the page is as important (if not more so) than what the camera captures.

Can you share with us some of your favourite short films you’ve seen lately?

Loved The Pearl Comb, which is beautifully done, and watched a short that made me both laugh out loud and cringe myself inside out called Plop.