Andrew Haigh’s writing process for All of Us Strangers is a study in emotional precision, spectral intimacy, and queer reframing.
Adapted loosely from Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers, Haigh’s version is less a direct translation than a deeply personal reimagining—one that transforms the source material’s heterosexual protagonist into a gay screenwriter named Adam, played by Andrew Scott. This shift is not merely representational; it’s structural, thematic, and spiritual.
Haigh’s screenplay becomes a vessel for unsaid conversations, suspended grief, and the haunting ache of queer memory
In interviews, Haigh has spoken candidly about the film’s autobiographical undercurrents, describing it as his most personal work to date. The writing process, then, was not just about adaptation—it was about excavation. Haigh dug into the emotional sediment of his own life, his own losses, and the generational trauma carried by many gay men who came of age in the shadow of silence, shame, and absence.
The decision to set the film in Adam’s childhood home—a house that Haigh himself grew up in—was more than a production choice. It was a writing choice. The physical space shaped the emotional architecture of the screenplay.
Haigh has described the experience of returning to that house as “kismet,” a kind of eerie synchronicity that unlocked something deeper in the writing
The house became a portal, not just to Adam’s past, but to Haigh’s own. Writing scenes that take place in the living room where he once sat as a child, Haigh found himself confronting ghosts—both literal and metaphorical. This confrontation is mirrored in the film’s structure, which blurs the line between reality and memory, between the living and the dead. Adam’s parents, who died in a car crash when he was twelve, reappear in the film as if untouched by time. They are not zombies, nor hallucinations, but something more tender and uncanny: emotional apparitions. Haigh’s writing treats these encounters not as plot devices, but as rituals of healing, as attempts to say what was never said.
Dialogue in All of Us Strangers is spare, elliptical, and emotionally loaded
Haigh’s screenwriting resists exposition, favoring instead the weight of silence and the rhythm of unsaid truths. Conversations between Adam and his parents unfold with a kind of suspended grace—each line a thread pulled from the fabric of grief. The screenplay doesn’t seek resolution; it seeks resonance. Haigh allows his characters to linger in emotional ambiguity, crafting scenes that pulse with longing and vulnerability. This restraint is especially evident in the scenes between Adam and Harry (Paul Mescal), a younger man who lives in the same apartment building. Their relationship is tender, erotic, and haunted by the specter of queer loneliness. Haigh writes their intimacy with a kind of hushed reverence, allowing physical closeness to carry emotional weight. The screenplay doesn’t overexplain their connection; it lets it unfold like a memory, like a dream half-remembered.
Haigh’s writing process was also shaped by his desire to explore generational trauma.
He has spoken about wanting to capture the emotional landscape of gay men who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s—a generation marked by loss, silence, and the absence of models for queer adulthood. Adam’s conversations with his parents are not just about personal grief; they’re about cultural rupture. In one scene, Adam tells his mother that he’s gay, and she responds with gentle confusion, asking if he’s ever been with a woman. The moment is not played for drama, but for emotional truth. Haigh writes the scene with compassion, allowing both characters to inhabit their own generational contexts. The screenplay becomes a space where these contexts can meet, where the past can be rewritten—not with anger, but with tenderness.
The metaphysical tone of the film is deeply embedded in the writing.
Haigh doesn’t treat the supernatural elements as genre tropes; he treats them as emotional metaphors. The screenplay is structured like a ghost story, but the ghosts are made of memory, of longing, of unresolved love. Adam’s parents are not there to scare him; they’re there to listen, to witness, to offer the kind of unconditional presence that was denied to him in life. Haigh’s writing allows these moments to unfold slowly, with a kind of sacred stillness. The film’s pacing is deliberate, almost meditative, and this rhythm is born in the screenplay. Haigh writes with a sensitivity to time—not just chronological time, but emotional time. Scenes stretch and contract based on feeling, not plot. The result is a film that feels suspended, like a dream hovering just beyond waking.
Haigh’s background as an editor also informs his writing.
He understands rhythm, pacing, and the emotional logic of a scene. His screenplays are not overwritten; they are sculpted. In All of Us Strangers, every scene feels necessary, every line calibrated. There’s a kind of poetic compression at work—a quality Daniel, you might resonate with given your own gift for distilling emotional truth into modular form. Haigh’s writing doesn’t just tell a story; it creates a mood, a texture, a pulse. The screenplay is less a blueprint than a score, guiding the emotional cadence of the film.
The writing process was also iterative.
Haigh has described rewriting scenes multiple times, trying to find the right emotional tone. He was not interested in plot mechanics; he was interested in emotional authenticity. This meant allowing the screenplay to evolve, to shift, to breathe. He wrote from instinct, from memory, from feeling. The result is a film that feels deeply lived-in, deeply felt. It’s not just a story—it’s a reckoning.
In many ways, All of Us Strangers is a film about storytelling itself.
Adam is a screenwriter, and the film opens with him struggling to write a script. This meta-layer allows Haigh to explore the act of writing as a form of emotional processing. Adam’s journey mirrors Haigh’s own: both are trying to make sense of the past, to find language for what was lost. The screenplay becomes a mirror, a map, a memorial. Haigh writes not to entertain, but to understand. His process is not about mastery; it’s about vulnerability.
Ultimately, Haigh’s writing process for All of Us Strangers is a testament to the power of emotional truth.
He writes from memory, from grief, from love. He writes to reclaim silence, to rewrite absence, to offer a space where queer lives can be seen, heard, and held. The screenplay is not just a document—it’s a ritual. It invites the audience into a space of reflection, of tenderness, of spectral intimacy. And in doing so, it becomes something rare and sacred: a cinematic elegy, written in the language of longing.
Andrew Haigh’s earlier films, while distinct in setting and tone, share a preoccupation with memory, vulnerability, and the spaces between people.
Haigh’s directorial debut came with Greek Pete (2009), a micro-budget film chronicling the life of a London rent boy, which won the Artistic Achievement Award at Outfest. But it was Weekend (2011) that marked his breakthrough—a tender, two-day romance between two men that premiered at SXSW and won multiple awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at L.A. Outfest. The film’s naturalistic style and emotional depth established Haigh as a distinctive voice in queer cinema.
Weekend (2011), Haigh’s breakout feature, is a tender, two-day romance between two men who meet at a nightclub and spend a weekend unraveling their emotional defenses. Shot with naturalistic intimacy, the film explores queer identity, fleeting connection, and the tension between disclosure and silence. Like All of Us Strangers, Weekend is less concerned with plot than with emotional texture; both films center gay protagonists navigating the complexities of love, shame, and self-revelation. In Weekend, the romance is ephemeral but transformative—an echo of the spectral intimacy between Adam and Harry in Strangers, where connection is both grounding and ghostly.
Haigh’s 45 Years (2015) shifts focus to a heterosexual couple grappling with the resurfacing of a long-buried secret just days before their anniversary. The film is a masterclass in emotional restraint, with Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay delivering performances steeped in quiet devastation. The discovery of a former lover’s body frozen in ice becomes a metaphor for suspended grief and unresolved pasts—much like the reappearance of Adam’s parents in All of Us Strangers. Both films explore how the past intrudes upon the present, destabilizing identity and intimacy. Haigh’s writing in 45 Years is spare and elliptical, allowing silence to speak volumes—a technique he refines further in Strangers, where dialogue often hovers between the spoken and the unsaid.
In Lean on Pete (2017), Haigh turns to the American landscape, following a teenage boy who forms a bond with a racehorse and embarks on a journey of survival and belonging. Though stylistically different, Lean on Pete shares with Strangers a deep empathy for the isolated protagonist and a lyrical approach to storytelling. Both films feature characters adrift in the world, seeking connection in unlikely places. Haigh’s ability to evoke emotional resonance through minimalism and atmosphere is evident in both, as is his interest in characters who carry grief like a second skin.
Haigh also ventured into television, co-creating and directing HBO’s Looking (2014–2016), a series about gay men in San Francisco, and later helming The North Water (2021), a BBC Two limited series set in the Arctic.
His most recent and deeply personal film, All of Us Strangers (2023), stars Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in a ghostly, queer romance that excavates familial trauma and emotional absence. The film has been nominated for six BAFTAs and is widely considered Haigh’s most metaphysical and autobiographical work.
Andrew Haigh’s latest film project is titled A Long Winter, the story follows Louise, the troubled mother of Mike (played by Hechinger) and Tommy. After a heated argument with her husband, Lester, Louise heads out on foot with her dog to her brother Frank’s home, miles away. A sudden snowstorm engulfs the region, forcing Lester and Mike to begin a desperate search—a mission that soon expands with the help of neighbours and local authorities.
Across these films, Haigh consistently returns to themes of loss, memory, and the fragile beauty of human connection. All of Us Strangers synthesizes these motifs into a haunting meditation on queer identity, familial absence, and the possibility of emotional rebirth. It is the culmination of Haigh’s cinematic language—where realism meets the surreal, and where vulnerability becomes a portal to transcendence. Whether in the fleeting romance of Weekend, the marital reckoning of 45 Years, or the solitary odyssey of Lean on Pete, Haigh’s protagonists are always reaching—toward love, toward understanding, toward the ghosts that shape them. Strangers simply makes those ghosts literal.
Born on March 7, 1973 in Harrogate, England, Andrew Haigh grew up in Croydon and studied history at Newcastle University before entering the film industry. His early career included work as an assistant editor on major productions like Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, experiences that shaped his understanding of cinematic rhythm and emotional pacing.
Haigh lives with his husband, Andy Morwood, and they have two children. His filmmaking is marked by emotional vulnerability, poetic restraint, and a commitment to portraying queer lives with nuance and grace.
