After her adoptive mother’s death, Hortense, a successful Black optometrist, establishes contact with her birth mother: a white working-class single mother named Cynthia. Cynthia denies Hortense is her daughter. Meanwhile, Cynthia and her young daughter Roxanne manage their love-hate relationship.

Brenda Blethyn took Best Actress in Cannes for Mike Leigh’s gripping drama, a film that explores the complicated relationships and frustrations of the modern family. Intricately staged and howlingly funny, few films capture the dysfunctional emotional landscape of Britain with such clarity.