Returning after 2018’s ‘Peterloo’, seven-time nominated Academy Awards writer/director Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Naked) comes with ‘Hard Truths’, the drama film following a woman (played by longtime collaborator Marieanne Jean-Baptise) struggling with anger issues and her easygoing younger sister (played by longtime collaborator Michele Austin) navigating their dramatic family life.
‘Hard Truths’ is set to have its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2024. The film will also be screened at the 72nd San Sebastian International Film Festival and the 2024 New York Film Festival.
Starring the film are are also David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett, Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown, and Jonathan Livingstone.
Release Date
Directed by Mike Leigh, ‘Hard Truths’ opens in US theaters on January 10, 2025.
Synopsis
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 and 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.
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for ‘Hard Truths’.