Winner of three awards at the Cannes Film Festival (Including Best Actress for Brenda Blethyn, whose performance also garnered an Oscar nomination), Secrets & Lies is widely acknowledged as Mike Leigh’s finest film, and one of the undisputed triumphs of modern British social realism.

Cynthia’s life has been a long series of painful disappointments. She never sees her brother, Maurice, who she helped raise, and her daughter Roxanne works as a street sweeper and is chronically bitter. One day, Cynthia receives a phone call from a woman named Hortense, who claims to be the daughter she put up for adoption. The two women quickly form a strong friendship, but when Cynthia decides to introduce the family to her new “friend,” it forces them to confront the lies and evasions that have kept them apart all these years.