This new edition updates Mike Leigh's career to his most recent films,
Mister Turner
and the epic masterpiece
Peterloo.
Five-time Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner, the only British director to have won the top prize at both Cannes (for
Secrets & Lies
) and Venice (for
Vera Drake
) - Mike Leigh is unquestionably one of world cinema's pre-eminent figures. Now, in this definitive career-length interview, he reflects on all that has gone into the making of his unique body of work.
In their commingling of bleakness and humor, Leigh's films recreate the tragi-comic world of people whose everyday lives are far from glamorous: a world in which 'the done thing' usually prevails, contrary to our inner hopes, wants or needs. Leigh's work has always reflected its times and entered the vernacular, whether the harsh studies of
Meantime
and
Naked
or the humor of the now-legendary
Abigail's Party
Nuts in May
.
Above all, Leigh is an accomplished storyteller, and these films deal with universal themes: births, marriages and deaths, parenthood and failed relationships, families and their secrets and lies.
Within these pages Leigh speaks to Amy Raphael more openly than ever before of his life and inimitable working method, revealing himself as passionate, forthright, no sufferer of fools, but the owner of a dry and playful Mancunian wit.