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Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we discuss Mike Leigh, one of our greatest living filmmakers. Born in England in 1943, Leigh remains an artist for the everyday person more than most. And this descriptor is quite reductive, as the writer/director’s aesthetic is deceivingly simple and incredibly effective. Our B-Sides are Life is Sweet, Career Girls, All or Nothing, and Peterloo. Our guest is Alex Heeney, Editor-in-Chief of The Seventh Row, co-author of Peterloo in Process, and host of the Seventh Row Podcast. They’ve covered several of Leigh’s films on the podcast, including Naked and Hard Truths.

Heeney also put together a short guide just for our listeners! It features a standout 2024 release that’s flown under the radar—with characters as rich...

Roger Pratt, a famous British photographer known for his striking visual style, has died. He was 77 years old. The British Society of Cinematographers (Bsc) announced his death and said he had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease that started early.

Pratt’s career spanned over forty years, during which time he established himself as one of the most adaptable directors of photography in the film business. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on “The End of the Affair” (1999) and worked with many innovative directors.

While filming “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), he and Terry Gilliam formed a successful relationship out of the blue. While shooting the Bridge of Death scene, Pratt, who was then a clapper loader, amazed Gilliam. Gilliam remembered, “This guy said, ‘Just give me a moment,’ and in a few minutes, he had run down the mountain, crossed the river, run up the other side,...

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 more than half a century, Leigh has been bringing audiences into the lives and homes of British citizens of various backgrounds and classes, developing original projects through a unique workshopping process whereby the actors have a hand in creating the characters they play.

“Hard Truths” builds upon the humanistic director’s signature method, reuniting him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin. The pair first played sisters in Leigh’s 1993 play “It’s a Great Big Shame” and close friends in his Palme d’Or-winning feature “Secrets & Lies” (1996). Their work on this film has been earning them acting kudos far and wide, with Jean-Baptiste scoring top honors from the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago critics groups.

As Leigh told Variety...

Oscar-nominated British cinematographer Roger Pratt has died, aged 77.

The British Society of Cinematographers, of which Pratt had been a member since 1986, confirmed the death and said Pratt had been suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Born in Leicester in 1947, Pratt attended the London Film School in the late sixties and got his first credit as camera assistant on director Mike Leigh’s 1971 film Bleak Moments. He would later serve as cinematographer on Leigh’s 1983 TV film Meantime and 1988 feature High Hopes.

Working as clapper loader on Monty Python And The Holy Grail in 1975 began Pratt’s relationship with Terry Gilliam,...

Oscar-nominated British cinematographer Roger Pratt has died, aged 77.

The British Society of Cinematographers, of which Pratt had been a member since 1986, confirmed the death and said Pratt had been suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Born in Leicester in 1947, Pratt attended the London Film School in the late sixties and got his first credit as camera assistant on director Mike Leigh’s 1971 film Bleak Moments. He would later serve as cinematographer on Leigh’s 1983 TV film Meantime and 1988 feature High Hopes.

Working as clapper loader on Monty Python And The Holy Grail in 1975 began Pratt’s relationship with Terry Gilliam,...

Roger Pratt, an Oscar-nominated British cinematographer who worked on two Harry Potter films and with such top directors as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Kenneth Branagh, Mike Leigh, Lasse Hallström, Neil Jordan, Wolfgang Petersen and Richard Attenborough, has died. He was 77.

The British Society of Cinematographers said he died in late 2024 but did not provide an exact date or a cause.

Pratt earned an Academy Award nom for Jordan’s The End of the Affair (1999) and also lensed the filmmaker’s Mona Lisa (1986) and 2000 short Not I. His dozens of credits include Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005); Burton’s Batman (1989); Leigh’s High Hopes (1988); Gilliam’s Brazil (1985), The Fisher King (1991) and 12 Monkeys (1995); Branagh’s Frankenstein (1994); and Hallström’s Chocolat (2000); and Petersen’s Troy (2004).

Pratt also was the go-to lenser for the late two-time Oscar winner Attenborough on several films including...

Now that they’ve set the year’s best film for a December 10 debut, the Criterion Channel have unveiled the rest of next month’s selection. John Waters’ films are inseparable from John Waters’ presence, making fitting Criterion’s decision to pair an eight-film retrospective (Multiple Maniacs to Cecil B. Demented) with his own “Adventures in Moviegoing” wherein the director extols virtues of Bergman, Chabrol, Barbara Loden, and Samuel Fuller. His own Polyester will have a Criterion Edition alongside the Bob Dylan doc Don’t Look Back, an iconic film in its own right and, I think, fitting companion to The Unknown with Lon Chaney, also streaming on Criterion. No Country for Old Men and Election receive likewise treatment; the latter appears in “MTV Productions,” a series featuring Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, The Original Kings of Comedy, and (coming close to Freddy Got Fingered for least-expected 2024 addition) Jackass: the Movie.

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

Those two stark monosyllables in the title are a callback to Leigh’s debut from 1971, Bleak Moments: they lay down an uncompromising and yet also enigmatic challenge. This movie isn’t going to be an easy ride; of course not. But if it promises to reveal hard truths in their simplest and most irreducible sense, then what are these hard truths exactly?

Perhaps the hardest and most obvious truth is that the lead character is suffering from clinical depression and urgently needs to see a professional about it. But no one actually puts that hard truth to her, or maybe they did, long ago, and had it angrily thrown back in their face. And so the second hard truth is that no one can...

Some people bring happiness and positivity into the world, uplifting the lives of all around them, and some make flowers wilt and milk curdle wherever they go. As Pansy, Marianne Jean-Baptiste embodies the latter sort in “Hard Truths,” coming away from her reunion with “Secrets & Lies” director Mike Leigh with her richest character yet — not economically speaking, of course, though we’d all be millionaires if we had a nickel for every blistering complaint that spills from Pansy’s lips.

“Hard Truths” arrives more than 50 years after Leigh’s first film, “Bleak Moments,” bookending a career of tough, tell-it-like-it-is looks at working-class British life. Frankly, that vague-sounding title seems better suited to a Criterion Collection boxed set of his work than to his latest feature. A return to intimate kitchen sink realism after the grand-scale ambition of several relatively expansive period pieces — “Topsy-Turvy,” “Vera Drake,” “Mr. Turner” and “Peterloo...

The 68th BFI London Film Festival has unveiled its lineup of Screen Talks, featuring a roster of high-profile filmmakers and actors.

The program includes sessions with Steve McQueen, Lupita Nyong’o, Denis Villeneuve, Andrea Arnold, Sean Baker, Daniel Kaluuya, Mike Leigh, Zoe Saldaña, and the documentary duo Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin.

Villeneuve, fresh off the success of the “Dune” films, will take audiences through his filmography, which includes “Arrival” and “Blade Runner 2049.” British filmmaker Andrea Arnold will share insights into her impact on both big and small screens, while Sean Baker, recent Palme d’Or recipient for “Anora,” will explore his approach to representing marginalized lives on film.

McQueen, whose film “Blitz” serves as the festival’s opening night gala, will discuss his work spanning both cinema and television. Oscar winner Nyong’o is set to reflect on her career trajectory from “12 Years a Slave” to recent...

Showing Up contains many of the hallmarks of a classic Kelly Reichardt picture: a Pacific Northwest setting, a Jonathan Raymond co-writing credit, Christopher Blauvelt cinematography, a rich ensemble cast, and an unrivaled attention to locations, production design, and wardrobe. There’s also Michelle Williams appearing in her fourth Reichardt film, their collaboration having begun with 2008’s Wendy and Lucy.

In Showing Up, Williams is Lizzy, a talented sculptor who finds herself a bit worn down by the realities of modern life. By all accounts she has a decent day job––something she likely wouldn’t refute––working in the office of the liberal arts college she attended. Outside of offering her rent and cat food money, the position keeps Lizzy plugged into the local art scene and most importantly grants her free access to the campus kiln (operated by André Benjamin in a joyful role).

Outside of Williams, that aforementioned...

The Locarno Film Festival’s Locarno Pro initiative dedicated to pics in post is set to look at films from the U.K. that are in their final stage of production for its upcoming 76th edition.

Locarno’s First Look focus on indie U.K. film segues from the fest having developed a close rapport with the British industry over the decades, spanning from Mike Leigh’s 1972 Golden Leopard winner “Bleak Moments” to Terence Davies’s “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” which scooped the pard in 1998, and the more recent launches last year of Andrew Legge’s “Lola” and Charlotte Colbert’s “She Will.”

Locarno’s First Look initiative, in partnership with the British Film Institute (BFI), will run August 4-6. Six selected U.K. films that are currently in post-production will be unveiled, providing their producers an opportunity to pitch them to international industry professionals attending the festival. The U.

These days, it’s refreshing to speak with someone like Mike Leigh whose vocabulary hasn’t been corrupted by the latest Hollywood trends. For example, when Leigh uses the word “content,” it’s doesn’t mean the same thing as 98 of his peers, for whom the term has come to describe the swill that fills the various streamers’ pipelines.

For Leigh, “content” refers to the substance of a film or play, as I found when asking Leigh, who is the subject of a 14-film, career-spanning retrospective by New York’s Film at Lincoln Center — from “Bleak Moments” to “Peterloo,” with two shorts thrown in for good measure — where he thinks audiences unfamiliar with his work ought to begin.

“I certainly don’t think anybody should be preoccupied with seeing my films for the first time in chronological order,” he says. “I think you could drop anchor anywhere and start.”

A...

Leading British independent filmmakers expressed some frank views on gatekeepers acting as a barrier to independent cinema at a BFI London Film Festival panel discussion on Tuesday.

The panel consisted of Palme d’Or winner Mike Leigh (“Secrets & Lies”), Oscar winner Asif Kapadia (“Amy”) and Golden Bear winner Michael Winterbottom (“In This World”). The discussion used Winterbottom’s recently published book “Dark Matter: Independent Filmmaking in the 21st Century” as a starting point. The discussion was moderated by former London Film Festival artistic director Sandra Hebron.

Leigh, who debuted in 1971 with “Bleak Moments,” has a unique approach to getting funded in that, except for his films with historical subject matter like “Topsy Turvy,” “Mr. Turner” and “Peterloo,” he does not reveal what his films are about. The reason for this process, he says, is that he discovers what a film is about during the process of making it.

In response,...

The award-winning director remembers Finney’s unique bonhomie, from his shining legacy at Salford grammar school to his support of Leigh’s film debut Bleak Moments

When I arrived at Salford grammar school in 1954, Albert Finney had just left for Rada, the glittering star of the school’s dramatic society. My school friend and future colleague Les Blair, a year my senior, witnessed his legendary performance as Sweeney Todd. Albert’s legacy shone its light on all of our productions and we tracked his meteoric progress in awe. My final-year production of a very forgettable play won the brand new Albert Finney cup, donated by his parents.

By the time I followed him to Rada in 1960, Albert had become an RSC star, understudying and going on for Laurence Olivier as Coriolanus; he had toured with Charles Laughton, had just completed Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and was appearing in the West End as Billy Liar.

Liz Smith as Grandma Georgina with the cast of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory Photo: Warner Bros Fellow stars paid tribute to actress Liz Smith yesterday, after her family announced the 95-year-old had died on Christmas Eve.

Smith, who became a household name for her small-screen role as Nana in BBC's The Royle Family, was a veteran of both television and film - even though she didn't land her first role until she was almost 50.

Recalling her role in Mike Leigh's Play For Today later, she said: “The moment that my life transformed was when I was standing in Hamley’s one Christmas, flogging toys and I got a message from this young director named Mike Leigh.

“I was nearly 50 at the time, but he wanted a middle-aged woman to do improvisations. I went to an audition and I got the job of the mother in this improvised film – Bleak Moments,...

Happy New Year! We're ushering in the first of January with the first films of some of our favorite filmmakers: a week of debut films!In the Us we're showing Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Todd Haynes' Poison, Stanley Kubrick's Fear and Desire, Alain Robbe-Grillet's L'immortelle, vulgar auteurism mascot Paul W.S. Anderson's Shopping, Wong Kar-wai's As Tears Go By, and Derek Jarman's Sebastiane. In the UK, the lineup features Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, Wong's As Tears Go By, Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape, Michelangelo Antonioni's Story of a Love Affair, Mike Leigh's Bleak Moments, Maurice Pialat's L'enfance nue, and Pedro Costa's O Sangue.

BAFTA Award-winning director to deliver a masterclass at the festival, which will programme a retrospective of his work.

British director Mike Leigh is to receive the Zurich Film Festival’s A Tribute to…award.

The director of Mr. Turner, Vera Drake and Secrets And Lies will collect Zurich’s Golden Eye trophy during the festival’s awards ceremony on Oct 3.

Leigh will also deliver a public masterclass at the festival, which will screen a retrospective of his productions, details of which have yet to be announced.

Previous recipients include Michael Haneke, Oliver Stone, Stephen Frears and (last year) Claire Denis.

In a statement, the festival described Leigh as “an important exponent of so-called New British Cinema, a genus of filmmaking that has performed a filmic analysis of and cast its critical lens upon social developments in Britain since the 1980s”.

Theatre, Television, Cinema

Leigh was born in 1943 in Salford, North West England. He began training...

Mr Turner director to be honoured this weekend.

BAFTA is to present director Mike Leigh with the Fellowship at its annual film awards this Sunday (Feb 8).

Awarded annually, the Fellowship is the highest accolade bestowed by BAFTA upon an individual in recognition of an outstanding and exceptional contribution to film, television or games.

Fellows previously honoured for their work in film include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Sean Connery, Elizabeth Taylor, Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Lee, Martin Scorsese and Alan Parker. Helen Mirren received the Fellowship at last year’s Film Awards.

Leigh said: “What a privilege to be honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship. I’m moved, delighted and surprised.”

Amanda Berry OBE, chief executive of BAFTA, described Leigh as “a true innovator, an artist and an exceptional filmmaker”.

This Saturday, the day before the ceremony in London, the writer-director will join a number of close colleagues and friends...

Mike Leigh is to be honoured with a BAFTA fellowship.

The Vera Drake and Mr Turner filmmaker will be presented with the accolade for his outstanding contribution to film at the Ee BAFTA Film Awards ceremony on Sunday, February 8.

Helen Mirren received the Fellowship at last year's awards ceremony.

Previous recipients include Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Judi Dench and Martin Scorsese.

Leigh said: "What a privilege to be honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship. I'm moved, delighted and surprised."

Leigh made his directorial debut 1971 film Bleak Moments. Highlights from an illustrious career include 1993's Naked, 1996's Secrets & Lies, 2004's Vera Drake and his recent biopic Mr. Turner.

The director previously received BAFTA's Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema award in 1996.

Watch the trailer for Leigh's Mr. Turner below:...

British director Mike Leigh (Mr. Turner) will be presented with a BAFTA Fellowship during the annual BAFTA film awards to be held February 8 at London’s Royal Opera House.

The Fellowship is BAFTA’s highest accolade in recognition of outstanding and exceptional contribution to film, TV and games.

Previous recipients include Charlie Chaplin, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Helen Mirren received last year’s Fellowship.

“What a privilege to be honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship,” commented Mike Leigh. I’m moved, delighted and surprised.”

Leigh has been one of the British film industry’s stalwarts for over four decades. He made his feature directorial debut with Bleak Moments in 1971. He has won three Baftas during his career: two for Secrets And Lies, which also won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and another award for best director for Vera Drake in 2004, which also won the Venice Golden Lion.

Welcome back to Cannes Check, In Contention's annual preview of the films in Competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 14. Taking on different selections every day, we'll be examining what they're about, who's involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Jane Campion's jury. Next up, the first of two British veterans in the lineup: Mike Leigh's "Mr. Turner." The director: Mike Leigh (British, 71 years old). Few filmmakers have essayed the mundane woes (and occasional joys) of Britain's working-to-middle classes with the vivid specificity of Mike Leigh, though given his distinctive vernacular and customarily heightened sense of the everyday, it's not quite accurate to classify him as a kitchen-sink realist. Either way, as both a playwright and filmmaker, he's as significant and influential a figure on the UK cultural lanscape as John Osborne or Alan Bennett. A Rada acting student turned art school graduate,...

Roger Ebert was unique among film critics in his warmth, his compassion, his enthusiasm and his unerring perception. Devoid of cynicism or gratuitous judgment, he never failed to grasp the deeper essence of what one was trying to do.

Of my first offering, Bleak Moments, he wrote: "The film is a masterpiece, plain and simple." Of course, it wasn't just this excessive praise that endeared him to me. Of that and all my subsequent films, his analysis was consistently and totally profound.

And he was a wonderful interviewer, charming and witty, even after cancer, when his voicebox had been removed, and he was talking bravely through a machine.

Roger EbertMike LeighMike Leigh

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The Margaret Thatcher era left an indelible mark on British cinema – not all of it negative. Here we select some key films that distilled the essence of Thatcher's Britain, for better or worse

My Beautiful Laundrette, 1985. Dir: Stephen Frears

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The spirit of free enterprise underpins the Hanif Kureishi-scripted, Stephen Frears-directed comedy – mordant but forward-looking in its equation of immigrant thrift with modern conservative values. Omar, son of a campaigning journalist-in-exile, turns to launderette-management, drug-stealing and inter-ethnic gay sex to boot. Genuinely groundbreaking in its subtle and empathetic portrait of a British Asian community, My Beautiful Laundrette was a teasing provocation to the mindset of the 70s old left. Daniel Day Lewis, of course, made a massive impact as punk rocker Johnny, a stereotype confounder who deserts his street-fighting confreres for Omar's charms. Kureishi's prescience even ran to the...

'I cautiously feel a touch of parental pride in my young self'

The other day, an intelligent young woman told me she had just watched Bleak Moments, my first film. Didn't she find it too slow, I asked – like watching paint dry? Oh no, she had loved every second – it was gripping, moving and funny. The veteran actor George Coulouris (Thatcher the lawyer in Citizen Kane) was in the cast when the rehearsals began. After three days, he walked out. He hated it. He would have played the father of the two sisters, but they became orphans instead. When the film was released and favourably received, George graciously came to a screening. Ungraciously, he walked out after half an hour, the last I ever saw of him. He was 70, my age now, nearly. I was 28, somewhat younger than my sons today. Inevitably, there is much I could criticise in my quirky old 1971 relic.

British film director Mike Leigh will be the Jury President of the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival.

Over the course of his nearly 40-year film career, Mike Leigh has distinguished himself as one of the most outstanding filmmakers of auteur cinema and protagonists of New British Cinema. His approach includes giving actors much leeway to improvise in order to develop their characters. Leigh portrays British society in a bluntly realistic but humorous style. His films have received countless international awards and several Oscar nominations.

Leigh has directed more than 20 films, as well as having made a name for himself as theatre director, dramatist and screenwriter. He first studied dramatic arts and then set design. Afterwards he attended the London Film School, of which he is now Chairman.

In 1972 he made his directorial debut with Bleak Moments, which went on to win the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. In...

Mia Hansen-Løve's third semi-autobiographical film features an ill-fated teen affair – but can it win the Golden Leopard?

Of all film festivals, Locarno's is the most magical. You can't forget starlit nights spent amid an 8,000-strong crowd in front of a huge screen in the historic Piazza Grande. Nor the casual encounters with stars, directors and fellow-fans that often accompany a stroll between screenings across the campus-like Spaziocinema. Still, often magic is not enough, and in recent years a trip to the Swiss lakeside town has been seen as a jolly for self-satisfied Euro cineastes. Now, however, things are changing.

Director Olivier Père is out to streamline and beef up the £8.2m event by rediscovering its knack for blending new, forgotten or esoteric work with mainstream populist fare. This year, that means a cutting-edge international competition with 14 world premieres, including those of Nicolas Klotz's Low Life, about an Afghan...

Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen Mike Leigh has been directing films about workaday Brits for 40 years, and his latest, Another Year, is no exception. The story of happily married Tom and Gerri - portrayed by Leigh stalwarts Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen - doesn't amount to a whole lot of action (as is par for Leigh's course). Rather, the film is a collection of moments, many of which are shocking in both their simplicity and their humanity. Leigh sat with us after a New York Film Festival screening this fall, a festival that has been home to a number of his premieres, including recent successes Happy-Go-Lucky and Vera Drake. Mike Leigh Tribeca: I know that you, Stephen Frears, and Ken Loach all came out of the same period at the BBC. And you've also done plays. Were you doing theater concurrently with teleplays? Mike Leigh: I made my first feature,...

Ahead of the release of his latest film, Another Year, the Secrets and Lies director will be here tomorrow to answer your questions

Click here to read Mike Leigh's answers

Mike Leigh will be visiting the Guardian office on Wednesday lunchtime ahead of the release this Friday of his latest film, Another Year. We'll be ushering the director in front of a computer to answer questions on his work, his life and – who knows? – maybe his women too.

Another Year, for the record, is Leigh's 19th feature in a career that stretches all the way back to Bleak Moments in 1971. He spent the bulk of the 70s and 80s making teleplays for the BBC (rustling up a whopping 16m viewers for Abigail's Party – thanks in large part, he says, to a stormy night and a blackout over on ITV) before returning to the big screen with 1988's High Hopes.

Mike Leigh's films are renowned for their formidable female characters. We get some of his favourite actresses, from veterans Alison Steadman and Brenda Blethyn to the stars of Another Year, together to discuss the special magic of creating a character with Leigh – and talk to the man himself

When Mike Leigh has anything to do with a party, it tends to be dangerous: everything, in his films, starts to unravel. But at this get-together of women who regularly act in them, all is well. They are opening the champagne, getting ready to smile for the camera, and someone – I think it is Alison Steadman – shouts: "To Mike!". Everyone – Imelda Staunton, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville, Marion Bailey, Karina Fernandez – lifts their glasses. There is much laughter and noisy conversation. I know how many of his regulars regret not being here because I have been talking to some of them – Brenda Blethyn,...

After Happy-Go-Lucky, Mike Leigh swore off middle-class drama – but he's broken his promise. He tells Xan Brooks about the personal issues that made him return

It's 9am at a Soho production office, downstairs from a flat occupied by a trio of French glamour models. The tea is served, the seats are taken and now, for the sake of argument, Mike Leigh and I are playing Hollywood deal-makers. The director has come to pitch his latest picture, Another Year, and I'm here to listen, puffing on a metaphorical cigar as he outlines the plot. "Another Year," he says. "Well, it's about a very nice couple who are really, really happy. And they have an allotment and a friend who's a drunkard and a son who doesn't have a partner." He breaks from the script to peer over his teacup. "This is moment where you're meant to show me the door."

Leigh...