Mike Leigh, the director of Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake, brought his portrait of two London social workers to a Gala at the Royal Festival Hall.
Mike Leigh, the director of Secrets & Lies, gave Tender Loving Care its British premiere at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Thursday 15 October 2026. It was a Gala of the seventieth London Film Festival.
Leigh was born in 1943 at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire, then a maternity home, and grew up in Salford. A scholarship took him to RADA, and art school and the London School of Film Technique followed.
He made his name with plays for BBC Television, Nuts in May and Abigail’s Party among them, before Bleak Moments opened his film career in 1971. He builds each film from months of rehearsal and improvisation with his actors.
Naked won him Best Director at Cannes in 1993, Secrets & Lies took the Palme d’Or three years later, and Vera Drake won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2004.
Tender Loving Care follows Amy and Rosie, social workers in contemporary London, through their work, their families and their dating lives. Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Kate O’Flynn and Alice Bailey Johnson form the ensemble.
Leigh has said it will probably be his last film. StudioCanal distributes it in Britain.