Hard Truths (M)

Legendary filmmaker Mike Leigh returns to the contemporary world with a fierce, compassionate, and often darkly humorous study of family and the thorny ties that bind us.

Reunited with Leigh for the first time since multiple Oscar-nominated Secrets and Lies, the astonishing Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who looks her way. Meanwhile, her easygoing younger sister, played by Michele Austin, is a single mother with a life as different from Pansy's as their clashing temperaments - brimming with communal warmth from her salon clients and daughters alike.

This expansive film from a master dramatist takes us into the intensities of kinship, duty, and the most enduring of human mysteries: that even through lifetimes of hurt and hardship, we still find ways to love those we call family.

Cast: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin

Director: Mike Leigh

★★★★★ "brilliantly-acted story" AARP

★★★★★ "Marianne Jean-Baptiste is Oscar-worthy in Mike Leigh's captivating new film" BBC

★★★★ "An affecting portrait of a woman in crisis" EMPIRE MAGAZINE

★★★★ "Mike Leigh’s uncompromising latest film is harrowing and hilarious, centred around a fearless lead performance by Marianne Jean-Baptiste" EVENING STANDARD

★★★★ "Mike Leigh’s Bafta-nominated Hard Truths will make you laugh and cry" INDEPENDENT UK

★★★★ "Marianne Jean-Baptiste is exceptional as a woman in the terrifying endgame of depression in this deeply sober and compassionate drama, not without flashes of fun" GUARDIAN

★★★★ "the film is masterly" ARTS DESK