Directed by:
Mike LeighScreenplay:
Mike LeighCinematography:
Dick PopeComposer:
Andrew DicksonCast:
Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Phyllis Logan, Claire Rushbrook, Elizabeth Berrington, Michele Austin, Lesley Manville, Ron Cook (more)Plots(1)
Writer-director Mike Leigh reached new levels of expressive power and intricacy in his ongoing contemplation of unembellished humanity with this resonant exploration of the deceptions, small and large, that shape our relationships to those we love. 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 desperately 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 the surface of everyday lives. (Criterion)
(more)Cast
Sheila Kelley
UK
Best movies:
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Dalziel and Pascoe (1996) (series)
Wish You Were Here (1987)
Terence Harvey
UK
Best movies:
Endeavour (2012) (series)
Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003) (TV movie)
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Grant Masters
Best movies:
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Wire in the Blood (2002) (series)
Derailed (2005)
Liz Smith
UK
Best movies:
The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
Between the Sheets (2003) (series)
Hannah Davis
UK
Best movies:
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Lee Ross
UK
Best movies:
Secrets & Lies (1996)
I.D. (1995)
The English Patient (1996)
Janice Acquah
Ghana
Best movies:
Sherlock (2010) (series)
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Miss You Already (2015)
Angela Curran
UK
Best movies:
Jonathan Creek (1997) (series)
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Messiah (2001) (TV movie)
Jonny Coyne
Best movies:
The Night Of (2016) (series)
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Irina Palm (2006)
Trevor Laird
UK
Best movies:
Secrets & Lies (1996)
One Man, Two Guvnors (2011) (theatrical recording)
Quadrophenia (1979)
Theresa Watson
UK
Best movies:
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Paddington (2014)
Topsy-Turvy (1999)
Frances Ruffelle
UK
Best movies:
Les Misérables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary (2010) (theatrical recording)
Secrets & Lies (1996)
The Hiding Place (1975)
Peter Waddington
Best movies:
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989) (series)
Little Dorrit (1987)
Lucy Sheen
Hong Kong
Best movies:
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Prime Suspect 2 (1992) (TV movie)
Stephen Churchett
UK
Best movies:
A Bridge Too Far (1977)
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Florence Nightingale (1985) (TV movie)
Margery Withers
Argentina
Best movies:
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Onegin (1999)
Amy Foster: Swept from the Sea (1997)
Peter Stockbridge
UK
Best movies:
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Elizabeth (1998)
All or Nothing (2002)
Wendy Nottingham
Best movies:
Atonement (2007)
Secrets & Lies (1996)
Babel (2006)