Movies: Mike Leigh

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman....

Pansy is a woman tormented by anger and depression, hypersensitive to the slightest possible offence and ever ready to fly off the handle. She criticises her husband and their adult son so relentlessly that neither bothers to argue with her. She pick...

An unemployed Brit vents his rage on unsuspecting strangers as he embarks on a nocturnal London odyssey....

Abortionist Vera Drake finds her beliefs and practices clash with the mores of 1950s Britain – a conflict that leads to tragedy for her family....

A look at a few chapters in the life of Poppy, a cheery, colorful, North London schoolteacher whose optimism tends to exasperate those around her....

Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him....

Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, Andy is a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, Natalie is a plumber and Nicola is jobless. This film is about how they...

After their production "Princess Ida" meets with less-than-stunning reviews, the relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan is strained to breaking. Their friends and associates attempt to get the two to work together again, which opens the way to "Th...

Penny works at a supermarket and Phil is a gentle taxi-driver. Penny’s love for Phil has run dry and they lead joyless lives with their two children, Rachel, a cleaner, and Rory, who is unemployed and aggressive....

During a year, a very content couple approaching retirement are visited by friends and family less happy with their lives....

Slice-of-life look at a sweet working-class couple in London, Shirley and Cyril, his mother, who's aging quickly and becoming forgetful, mum's ghastly upper-middle-class neighbors, and Cyril's pretentious sister and philandering husband. Shirley want...

A working-class family in London's East End is struggling to stay afloat during the recession under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Only the mother Mavis is working; father Frank and the couple's two sons Colin, a timid, chronically s...

An epic portrayal of the events surrounding the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter’s Field in Manchester turned into one of the bloodiest and most notorious episodes in British history. The massacre saw ...

A young college student in London moves into a flat and becomes best friends with a flatmate; the former moves into her own flat 4 years later but 6 years after their parting, the former returns to London to pay the latter a visit....

Beverly wears low-cut dresses, too much make-up, and has a reputation as a man-eating monster. She turns a social get-together between married couples into a virtual time-bomb of emotional tension....

Looks at the glamour, red carpets, movies, craziness, stunts, deals, parties and personalities that have been part of the Cannes Film Festival over eight decades, as well as looking to the future....

Marking Play for Today’s 50th anniversary, Drama Out of a Crisis is a compelling exploration of the series, its origins, achievements, controversies and legacies. Featuring a rich and surprising range of archive extracts and original interviews with...

A film director decides to chart the course of a young actor as he tries to make it in Hollywood......

Jim Broadbent wrote and starred in this short film directed by none other than Mike Leigh. As a member of the landed gentry, the 23rd Earl of Leete has a duty to maintain and expand his lands. Shot in the style and manner of a BBC documentary, Broadb...

A middle-class couple go camping in Dorset, but peace and quiet elude them....