'Secrets & Lies' Director: Mike Leigh (1996) Criterion Collection Blu-ray | Director-approved 2K restoration

An expert observer of unembellished humanity, writer-director Mike Leigh reached new levels of expressive power and intricacy with this exploration of the deceptions, small and large, that shape our relationships.

When Hortense, a Black optometrist who was adopted as a child, begins the search for her birth mother, she doesn’t expect that it will lead her to Cynthia, a lonely white factory worker whose tentative embrace of her long-lost daughter sends shock waves through the rest of her already fragile family.

Born from a painstaking process of rehearsal and improvisation with a powerhouse ensemble cast including Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Brenda Blethyn, Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville, Secrets & Lies is a Palme d’Or–winning tour de force of sustained tension and catharsis that lays bare the emotional fault lines running beneath everyday lives.

Special features include:
- Conversation between Leigh and composer Gary Yershon
- Conversation between actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste and film critic Corrina Antrobus
- Audio interview with Leigh, conducted by film critic Michel Ciment in 1996
- Essay by film programmer and critic Ashley Clark