“I’m a sick woman,” says Pansy Deacon, the newest in a long line of demanding heroines on offer from filmmaker Mike Leigh. By the time we hear this in Leigh’s Hard Truths, none of us, neither ...

The uncomfortable genius of Mike Leigh. In “Hard Truths,” Leigh reminds us that a family dinner can tell the story of a whole society. A spring morning on a quiet street in suburban North London.

In Hard Truths Mike Leigh, one of Britain’s greatest living directors, reunites with actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste nearly ...

That’s what Mike Leigh, the 82-year-old director of such classics as High Hopes, Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy, Career Girls, and Mr. Turner says when a journalist meeting him for an interview ...

Mike Leigh's new film, "Hard Truths," can be tough stuff. Pansy Deacon is a middle-aged housewife living in London suburbs and always seems about to explode. She harangues her grown son, Moses, who's ...

Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths Courtesy of Bleecker Street A nostalgic tug got this particular film rolling. Almost three decades had elapsed since Leigh made Secrets & Lies, and Jean-Baptiste ...

Mike Leigh movies feel like a magic trick. Observational, wry, funny, devastating and always rooted in character, Leigh allows us to take in some of the most fascinating people, the milieu they ...

Some filmmakers have the whole movie in their heads before the first actor gets cast. On the other end of that spectrum. Some directors just kind of roll tape and let the movie happen. Then figure ...

The title of Mike Leigh’s latest movie, “Hard Truths,” suggests a remarkable, career-spanning consistency, tracing back to the stage and screen director’s 1971 big-screen debut, “Bleak Moments.” For ...

In Mike Leigh's newest film, Marianne Jean-Baptiste stars as an overly critical woman struggling with her mental health. Leigh and Jean-Baptiste talk with NPR's Scott Simon about "Hard Truths." Mike ...