Mike Leigh

A married couple who have managed to remain blissfully happy into their autumn years are surrounded over the course of the four seasons of one average year by friends, colleagues, and family who all seem to suffer some degree of unhappiness.

In a crowded South London apartment building, Penny, a working mom, struggles to keep her wayward daughter, her lazy son, and her disillusioned partner on the right path.

Poppy is a life-loving and irrepressibly cheerful primary school teacher. She is thirty years old, single, and infinitely optimistic and accepting. She lives with her best friend and flatmate Zoe in London. She is tested by a repressed driving instructor with anger problems, and, in turn, she decides to test him. She has exciting flamenco lessons, an encounter with a homeless man, an argument with her pregnant sister, and a love-affair with the social...

Vera Drake tells of a woman in 1950s England who is devoted to caring for her family, but secretly aids women who want to terminate unwanted pregnancies. When the authorities find her out, Vera's world and family life rapidly unravel.

The story of the famous musical team of Gilbert and Sullivan and their collaboration on the Mikado.

When Hortense begins the search for her birth mother as an adult, the revelation that a lonely white factory worker gave up a black baby for adoption sends shock waves through the family.