Always on
This project successfully funded on 6th April 2026, you can still support them with a donation.
Scratching Post
London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Aim
To raise funds to cover the production and post-production costs of our film Scratching Post.
We are Abigail, Louisa, Rebecca and Alice, and we are excited to share our latest project with you: Scratching Post, a daring and darkly comic short film exploring identity, autonomy, and power. It challenges audiences to reconsider their assumptions and make space for narratives that sit outside convention.
COLLIDER // IMDB // INSTAGRAM // DECK // PINTEREST // PLAYLIST
Logline: A submissive must prove devotion to their Domme whilst at their dad's birthday party
Synopsis: Scratching Post follows Finn, a non-binary submissive, as they navigate identity, intimacy, and family. Opening with a charged BDSM encounter complete with collar and tail, the story shifts to a raucous family gathering for Finn’s mostly absent Irish father’s birthday. When Finn’s tail is unexpectedly discovered, unspoken truths emerge, exposing power dynamics that extend far beyond the bedroom.
The short will also serve as a proof-of-concept for a TV miniseries that explores Finn's world and the complex, layered dynamics within it.
ATTACHED CAST:
- Abigail Hardingham (BBC’s The Missing, Netflix’s The Innocents, Netflix’s You)
- Bronagh Waugh (Channel 4’s InFlight, ITV’s Ridley, BBC/Netflix’s TheFall)
- Calvin Demba (Netflix’s Supacell, 20th Century Fox’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle)
- Michele Moran (Netflix’s The Witcher, BBC’s Call The Midwife)
- Brendan Dunlea (RTE’s Fair City, Magma Production’s Jack Taylor)
- Jane Grey (Professional Dominatrix)
KEY CREW:
Writer: Abigail Hardingham
Director: Louisa Connolly-Burnham
DOP: Angela Zoe Neil
Producers: Rebecca Baker, Alice Duke and Louisa Connolly-Burnham
Production Companies: Cut + Roll Films and Thimble Films
Post-production: Harbor Picture Company
At its core, Scratching Post is a deeply personal, semi-autobiographical exploration of power, identity, and the negotiations people make in order to be seen and accepted, often at the expense of who they truly are.
Through its depiction of kink, intimacy, and sex work, Scratching Post offers an explicit framework for exploring consensual power dynamics with curiosity and care. The film deliberately skews away from the idea of a stereotypical client, asking instead what it means when intimacy is chosen, negotiated, and paid for, and what kinds of emotional labour are deemed acceptable or respectable.
The family dinner at the heart of the film serves as a counterpoint to Finn’s world of chosen submission. It reveals unspoken hierarchies, the tension between expectation and self-definition, and the ways power manifests across all relationships, whether in the bedroom or at a dinner table.
From there, the film asks what parts of ourselves we learn to hide within the families we did not choose, and why. What those negotiations look like in practice, and who they are really for. It asks how power operates in domestic spaces, enforced through silence, expectation, and long-learned habits of compliance.
The dinner becomes its own kind of endurance. A quiet masochism shaped not by whips or rituals, but by restraint, omission, and the steady erosion of self, absorbed and carried differently by each member of the family.
Ultimately, Scratching Post asks audiences to examine their own power dynamics, and to notice which are chosen and consensual, and which are quietly inherited, unspoken, or endured. It does so with a distinctly Irish charm and the dark, self-aware humour shaped by the long afterlife of a distant parent, as it explores the quiet compromises we make to belong, and the parts of ourselves we risk leaving behind.
Lots of love,
Abigail, Louisa, Rebecca and Alice x
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made