Mike Leigh

Penny's love for her partner, taxi-driver Phil, has run dry. He is a gentle, philosophical guy, and she works on the checkout at a supermarket. Their daughter Rachel cleans in a home for elderly people, and their son Rory is unemployed and aggressive. The joy has gone out of Phil's and Penny's life, but when an unexpected tragedy occurs, they are brought together to rediscover their love... (imdb)

Cynthia lives in London with her sullen street-sweeper daughter. Her brother has been successful with his photographer's business and now lives nearby in a more upmarket house. But Cynthia hasn't even been invited round there after a year. So, all round, she feels rather lonely and isolated. Meanwhile, in another part of town, Hortense, adopted at birth but now grown up, starts to try and trace her mother. (imdb)

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 one of their greatest successes. (imdb)

Vera Drake is a selfless woman who is completely devoted to, and loved by, her working class family. She spends her days doting on them and caring for her sick neighbor and elderly mother. However, she also secretly visits women and helps them induce miscarriages for unwanted pregnancies. While the practice itself was illegal in 1950s England, Vera sees herself as simply helping women in need, and always does so with a smile and kind words of encouragement. When the authorities finally find her out, Vera's world and family life rapidly unravel. (imdb)

Johnny flees Manchester for London, to avoid a beating from the family of a girl he has raped. There he finds an old girlfriend... (imdb)

2 young women reunite and rekindle their friendship after having said goodbye at their college graduation, six years earlier. (imdb)

Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend's new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon... (imdb)

An odd film, primarily looking at how the dole affects the underclass in Britain. Tim Roth stars as Colin, a slow and possibly retarded man living with his parents and brother in a housing project. He and his sarcastic manipulative brother still behave like teenagers, living with their parents, harassing each other... (imdb)

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... (imdb)

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. (imdb)

Moments from the uncompromisingly bleak existence of a secretary, her intellectually disabled sister, aloof and uneasy teacher boyfriend, bizarre neighbor and irritating workmate. (imdb) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066842/)

5 short films made by Mike Leigh

The 23rd Earl of Leete, a British aristocrat, tells his far-from-dull life story. (Channel4)

A short comedy by Mike Leigh about the romance between a young woman and a man who communicates only through jokes and humor. The story is told as a series of very short vignettes between her and the man and her and her doting mother, a hairdresser. (imdb)

A happily married, middle-aged couple are visited by a number of unhappy and lonely friends who use them as confidants. When an unmarried friend falls for their young son, they watch as events unfold. (tiff.net)

Two couples, one Catholic, one Protestant, exist on two sides of the chasm that is everyday life in Northern Ireland. Both women are expecting babies, both couples tell offbeat stories, both couples get by with what little they have. Yet Mike Leigh allows his actors to show not how much but how little these two couple have in common. "Four Days in July" is wonderful yet scathing look at the turmoil that has engulfed Northern Ireland for generations. (Mike Stimler)

Members of a family lives frantic lives of Olympian proportion. (imdb)

An exploration of the last quarter century of the great, if eccentric, British painter J.M.W. Turner's life. (imdb)

The story of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre where British forces attacked a peaceful pro-democracy rally in Manchester. (imdb)

Ongoing exploration of the contemporary world with a tragicomic study of human strengths and weaknesses. (imdb)