Secrets and Lies

Director: Mike Leigh, Mike Leigh

1996 / 136min / DCP

The winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, Leigh’s tender, funny, fearless film has Brenda Blethyn in a career-best performance as Cynthia, a white working-class woman who has a life-changing revelation when she meets Black middle-class optometrist Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who informs Cynthia she’s the little girl Cynthia had given up for adoption 27 years ago, all grown up. Developed, like all of Leigh’s films, through a process of collaborative improvisation, it’s a film of startling spontaneity and uncomfortable, unflinching emotional honesty.