Like the motion in his broadly acclaimed new movie “Hard Truths”, veteran British director Mike Leigh swings between gratitude and despair as he displays on his life and profession.
The 82-year-old is conscious of the good fortune he has needed to make greater than a dozen movies over a glittering five-decade run, together with “Secrets and Lies” and “Vera Drake”.
But he’s additionally aware of the difficulties for the youthful generations coming by — and is scared by the “profoundly worrying” modifications underway on the earth underneath U.S. President Donald Trump.
“It’s a privilege to be able to make films and it’s a privilege which is getting tougher to experience,” he informed AFP throughout a retrospective of his work on the prestigious Cinemateque in Paris. “I consider myself very lucky. Filmmaking is a joyous experience.”
Already engaged on his subsequent undertaking regardless of his rising mobility issues — he suffers from a genetic muscular illness known as myositis — Leigh says he’s troubled by a way of the world being on the brink.
“It feels like World War III may be around the corner. Now, I never thought I’d say that and I’m old enough to remember the end of World War II, just about. I was born in the war. It’s profoundly worrying and one feels helpless.”
“Hard Truths”, praised as one of many Leigh’s strongest latest movies, is a poignant and typically darkly shaggy dog story of two sisters that whiplashes viewers with equally contrasting feelings.
Lead character Pansy is a clearly depressed, anxious and aggressive married mother-of-one, performed with brio by British actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste.
Her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) is pleasant, sociable and easy-going, with a house and household life that stands in sharp distinction.
The movie reunites the 2 Black British actors from “Secret and Lies”, practically 30 years after it gained the Palme d’Or on the Cannes pageant and a number of Oscar nominations.
While the 1996 hit was about household and identification, “Hard Truths” is a research in what makes some folks pessimists and self-pitying, whereas others appear to glide by life’s difficulties with smiles on their faces.
As is his customized, Leigh provides no apparent solutions on display — and he dodges a query about his ideas on the problem.
“You’re asking me what’s the secret of life? I’m not so pretentious or so self-opinionated as to pontificate about how to live,” he replied. “I’ve worked very hard. I’ve used my imagination. I was engaged. For me, it’s about engaging with people.”
“Hard Truths” is the primary time Leigh has labored with an virtually all-Black solid, portraying London’s vibrant Caribbean-origin group.
He has no time for solutions that he, a white director, ought to hesitate about taking up such a problem.
“It seemed a natural thing to do. It’s not a quantum leap. “I raised my youngsters in north London and so they have been at college there and Black youngsters have been at all times operating out and in of our home,” he explained. “But however, it goes with out saying, I could not sit in a room and write a standard script for such a movie.”
He used the identical collaborative strategy he has deployed all through his profession, beginning out with an concept, after which operating workshops with the actors to develop the characters, dialogue and plot.
“In making the decision to center on Black characters, one of the deliberate things that I’ve very consciously done is to say: ‘This is not going to be a film that deals in tropes and stereotypes and troubles with the law and drug issues and all the gang stuff’,” Leigh continued.
“The main issues in the film are universal and are not endemic or exclusive to black people,” he added.
He declines to speak about his subsequent undertaking however says discovering financing is turning into more and more tough as a result of backers — significantly the streaming platforms — need a lot say within the ultimate product.
“It’s very, very depressing and very worrying,” he concluded.
“I talk to potential backers and they say: ‘We respect what you do, we like what you do but it’s not for us,'” he mentioned.
“‘Not for us’ is code for: ‘We’re not going to get involved in a project where we can’t interfere with it, insist on casting Hollywood stars, we can’t screw up the end, we can’t mess about with you while you’re trying to film, etcetera, etcetera.’ It’s desperate.”
© 2025 AFP