Secrets & Lies

Hortense is a young Black optometrist in London. After her adoptive mother dies, she decides to trace her birth mother. The records lead her to Cynthia, a white, working-class woman in her forties who lives in a run-down house with her angry adult daughter and works in a cardboard-box factory. Cynthia gave a baby up for adoption as a teenager and has never talked about it. When Hortense calls her, Cynthia's first reaction is that there must be a mistake.

Mike Leigh builds his films through months of improvisation with his actors, and here the method produces scenes of incredible truth. The first meeting between Hortense and Cynthia, in a café, filmed in one long take side by side, is one of the great scenes of British cinema: awkward, funny, painful, and finally overwhelming. Brenda Blethyn won Best Actress at Cannes, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Timothy Spall, as Cynthia's photographer brother, are just as good.

The film builds slowly to a family birthday barbecue where all the secrets of the title come out, one after the other. It is very funny and very sad, and full of compassion for every character, even the most difficult. It won the Palme d'Or. A film about family, class and race in Britain, and about the courage it takes to tell the truth. Wonderful.