Legendary filmmaker Mike Leigh returns to the contemporary world with a fierce, compassionate, and often darkly humorous study of family and the thorny ties that bind us. Reunited with Leigh for the first time since multiple Oscar-nominated SECRETS & LIES, the astonishing Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who looks her way. Meanwhile, her easygoing younger sister, played by Michele Austin (ANOTHER YEAR), is a single mother with a life as different from Pansy’s as their clashing temperaments – brimming with communal warmth from her salon clients and daughters alike. This expansive film from a master dramatist takes us into the intensities of kinship, duty, and the most enduring of human mysteries: that even through lifetimes of hurt and hardship, we still find ways to love those we call family.
“As always, Leigh doesn’t put his characters on the couch or disgorge the traumas that are etched in every word and gesture…. Instead, with deep feeling and lacerating and gentle words, Leigh creates a world that, like the vast, mysterious one hovering outside its frame, can seem agonizingly empty if you can’t see the people in it.” —Manohla Dargis, NYT Critic’s Pick, New York Times
“Some filmmakers make movies that feel like you could use them to reconstitute cinema if the art form ever vanished. Mike Leigh makes movies that feel like you could use them to reconstitute humanity if we ever vanished.” —Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
“Writer-director Mike Leigh is 81 years old, and his movies consistently have a fire that's practically adolescent while imparting a wisdom that's possibly ancient. HARD TRUTHS is a tragi-comedy character study of near-febrile vitality. And, entering the sweepstakes rather late in the game, it's one of the very few great films of 2024.” —Glenn Kenny, rogerebert.com
“There’s profound poetry in every scene. While Pansy’s [Marianne Jean-Baptiste] outlook on life seems all but intractable, the simple act of observing her may shift how we see the world.” —Peter Debruge, Variety
“A horribly sad and sometimes hilariously funny portrait of the most unpleasant sourpuss woman in the history of cinema. She’s a rotten mother and a terrible wife, and everyone around her is racked with pain except the audience, which slowly begins to root for her. A wretched experience I’ll cherish forever.” —John Waters