Movies: Mike Leigh

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...

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

After their latest production, "Princess Ida", meets with less-than-stunning reception, Gilbert and Sullivan's relationship is strained to the breaking point. Their friends and associates attempt to get the two to work together again, which bares the...

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....

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 ...

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 multi-part documentary about Alan Clarke, featuring interviews with various actors, writers and producers....

Documentary on Ciby 2000, the French film production company founded by Francis Bouygues in 1990....

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...

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...

Writer and Director Mike Leigh discusses the techniques used to create his plays....

Pansy is a woman so full of rage that every interaction she has devolves into lashing out, whether at her utterly cowed husband and son, or random strangers who have the temerity to address her. In contrast, her younger sister Chantelle lives with he...

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

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

Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, David Lynch, and Jonas Mekas, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman shows what these filmmakers and ot...

A documentary about Vittorio de Sica with clips of his films and testimonials from friends and family....

Three postal workers and their dysfunctional families interact over cups of tea and Sunday dinner....

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

Moments from the uncompromisingly bleak existence of a secretary, her intellectually disabled sister, aloof and uneasy teacher boyfriend, bizarre neighbor and irritating workmate....

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....