The lives of three proletarian families in London form the fabric of Leigh’s eighth theatrical feature, a vividly traced and superlatively acted portrait of everyday working-class struggle.

Brimming with joy and tragedy, old wounds and new beginnings, Another Year observes four seasons in the lives of a longtime married couple; their 30-year-old son; and the wife’s single, middle-aged work colleague (a heartbreaking Lesley Manville).

An eloquent study of unexamined lives, Leigh’s debut concerns a repressed office assistant and her painful courtship of a guarded schoolteacher.

Two former flatmates reunite after six years apart in Leigh’s masterful late-’90s comedy-drama, a captivating portrayal of female friendship and the loves and regrets that have marked it along the way. Screening with A Sense of History.

Leigh’s irresistible 2008 character study centers on Poppy (played with star-making sparkle by Sally Hawkins), a single, 30-year-old kindergarten teacher whose relentless optimism is not always welcome.

Leigh’s second theatrical feature, a narratively surprising and incisive work of social realism, follows a left-wing working-class couple as they interact with a range of characters across the spectrum of classes in English society.

A comic yet gently melancholic story with food and symmetry on its mind, Life Is Sweet twins the humble efforts of good-natured chef Andy (Jim Broadbent) to open his own mobile snack bar with the disastrous nouvelle-cuisine pretensions of the grandiose restaurateur (Timothy Spall) for whom Andy’s wife works as a waitress.

An episodic comic drama originally produced for Britain’s Channel 4, Meantime centers on the Pollocks, an East End–dwelling working-class family trying to keep the lights on amid the recession during Thatcher’s premiership. Screening with The Short and Curlies.

Leigh’s 12th theatrical feature is a portrait of a great artist (J.M.W. Turner, masterfully rendered by Timothy Spall) and his time, and a rich, funny, moving, and clear-eyed film about art and its creation.

Dancing on a razor’s edge between violence and tenderness, Leigh’s astonishing and influential fourth theatrical feature follows Johnny (an unforgettable David Thewlis), a sadistic yet charming drifter, as he undertakes a journey to the end of the London night.

Produced in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre, Leigh’s most recent feature, a long-gestating passion project, is arguably his most ambitious treatment of British history.

Leigh cemented his status as the poet laureate of modern family life with this story of Cynthia, a working-class white woman whose personal life is transformed when she discovers that a Black optometrist is the child she gave up for adoption 27 years prior.

Leigh delivered what may be his masterpiece with this lavish, one-of-a-kind backstage musical about the creation of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s 1885 opera The Mikado.

In this shattering drama about the unintended consequences of virtue, Vera Drake (a superb Imelda Staunton)—hardworking cleaning woman and fond mother of two—secretly helps out women who find themselves with unwanted pregnancies in early-1950s Britain.