This film was proposed by our member Lily Paisner, who writes: 'I can’t find it available to watch anywhere online, and it has been on my watchlist for ages! Would love the chance to watch it at The Garden Cinema.'

An expert observer of unembellished humanity, writer-director Mike Leigh reached new levels of expressive power and intricacy with this exploration of the deceptions, small and large, that shape our relationships. When Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a Black optometrist who was adopted as a child, begins the search for her birth mother, she doesn’t expect that it will lead her to Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn, winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s best actress award), a lonely white factory worker whose tentative embrace of her long-lost daughter sends shock waves through the rest of her already fragile family. Born from a painstaking process of rehearsal and improvisation with a powerhouse ensemble cast, Secrets & Lies is a Palme d’Or–winning tour de force of sustained tension and catharsis that lays bare the emotional fault lines running beneath everyday lives.

Please note, the screening on Wednesday 26 February is our Free Members' Screening, while the one on Wednesday 5 March is a regular screening, which is open to the general public.

Cast:
Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Timothy Spall