Directed by Mike Leigh • 1990 • United Kingdom
Starring Claire Skinner, Jane Horrocks, Jim Broadbent
This invigorating film from Mike Leigh was his first international sensation. Melancholy and funny by turns, it is an intimate portrait of a working-class family in a suburb just north of London—an irrepressible mum and dad (Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent) and their night-and-day twins, a bookish good girl and a troubled, ill-tempered layabout (Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks). Leigh and his typically brilliant cast create, with extraordinary sensitivity and craft, a vivid, lived-in story of ordinary existence, in which even modest dreams—such as the father’s desire to open a food truck—carry enormous weight.
Directed by Mike Leigh • 1993 • United Kingdom
Starring David Thewlis, Lesley Sharpe, Katrin Cartlidge
The brilliant and controversial NAKED, from director Mike Leigh, stars David Thewlis as Johnny, a charming and eloquent but relentlessly vicious drifter. Rejecting anyone who might care for him...
Directed by Mike Leigh • 1996 • United Kingdom
Starring Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Timothy Spall
Mike Leigh’s Palme d’Or–winning masterpiece charts the shockwaves that ripple through an already-fractured London family when Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a successful, adopted ...
Directed by Mike Leigh • 1997 • United Kingdom
Starring Katrin Cartlidge, Lynda Steadman
CAREER GIRLS looks at two thirty-year-old career women who meet up after a long period apart and rediscover the relationship they enjoyed when they shared an apartment years ago. Moving, sad and funny, it’s ...
