Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a 30-something Black optometrist, whose comfortable middle-class existence is disrupted when she discovers that the birth mother who gave her up for adoption is a white woman. When she attempts to connect, it becomes clear Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), her brother Maurice (Timothy Spall) and their entire dysfunctional family have had their lives controlled by layers of pretence and deception.

Winner of the 1996 Palme d'Or and Best Actress for Brenda Blethyn at Cannes, Secrets & Lies is a quintessentially Mike Leigh portrait of human frailty told with empathy and wit. It represents the moment in his career when the auteurist methods that made it so difficult for him to find funding truly prove their worth: the improvisational, actor-led scripting infuses simple conversations with tension and unpredictability, a heightened form of reality that makes a family barbecue feel as thrilling as a scene of kinetic action.

This film plays as part of our Mike Leigh: Difficult People series, a complete feature retrospective that tracks the evolution of the British director’s style, relationships with long-term creative collaborators and his truly unique creative process.