Tuesday 4th January at 12.30pm 

Hard Truths

Housewife Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is not happy. She is agoraphobic, a hypochondriac and paranoid about animals, birds, insects, plants, and flowers. She is confrontational with everyone, especially her plumber husband Curtley and her unemployed son Moses, whom she thinks is wasting his life. Her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) runs a thriving hair salon. A single mum, she enjoys life, and lives harmoniously with her daughters Kayla, who works in cosmetics, and Aleisha, a trainee lawyer.

Leigh’s new film explores family relationships in the post-pandemic world. After over a decade spent making his two epic period films MR. TURNER and PETERLOO, Mike Leigh returns to his ongoing exploration of the contemporary world with this tragi-comic study of human strengths and weaknesses.

“Leigh knows we don’t need to know all the “whys.” What he’s really interested in is the “what,” and Jean-Baptiste, in this astonishing performance, walks hand-in-hand with him to fill in the mosaic of this character.” Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine