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 black optometrist, makes contact with Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn, winner of the best actress prize at Cannes), her desperately dysfunctional white birth mother, who is woefully unprepared to deal with the situation. With unexpected humor and gripping emotional realism, Leigh crafts an intricate, richly human exploration of the buried tensions and heartaches that run beneath the surface of family life.
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 ...
Directed by Mike Leigh • 2002 • United Kingdom
Starring Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville, James Corden
Mike Leigh’s inimitable feeling for working-class lives lends tragicomic richness to this unsparing human drama set over the course of a long weekend in a London housing estate. Penny (Lesley Man...
Directed by Mike Leigh • 2004 • United Kingdom
Starring Imelda Staunton, Phil Davis, Daniel Mays
Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) is a devoted, working-class mother in 1950s London who is both beloved and admired by everyone who surrounds her. Yet she carries a secret that few people know: she induc...
