Plot
Leigh-Anne Williams is still only in her late teens and has already suffered the suicide of her mother when she was a child, as well as abuse at the hands of her father, and they worry about their younger sister who is in her early teens. Their father later married their mother's sister and they have a much younger daughter together.
Leigh-Anne has had a baby daughter Rebecca, less than a year old, and is very protective towards her. The father is in prison, but his mother remains in contact with Leigh-Anne and suggests that Rebecca would be better off in her care.
Leigh-Anne has made quite a few significant enemies in her local area, a deprived part of South Wales. She is involved in constant confrontations with her Turkish Muslim neighbour Hassan Osman, and is so desperate to support her baby that she will commit shocking acts in order to get money. She tricks a much older man out of £30 by pretending to be a pimp. She gets a younger girl (under the age of consent) to have sex with the man, which doesn't come to the attention of the police but is witnessed by Hassan's teenage daughter.
Three of the few people who have good relationships with Leigh-Anne are her younger brother Gavin, and Gavin's friends Robbie and Stephen. But they are actively involved in crime including anti-social behaviour, and Leigh-Anne is a willing participant or bystander in many of their antics. She receives regular visits from a social worker, and fears that Rebecca will be taken away from her. When Leigh-Anne sees her social worker talking with Hassan Osman, she fears that Osman is trying to get Rebecca taken into care by the local authority.
Leigh-Anne, Gavin, Robbie and Stephen are at a local library one day when they encounter Hassan Osman and his teenage daughter Julie, who has recently been in a relationship with Gavin. Julie's had effectively ended their relationship by his disapproval. An argument starts as they leave the centre, and it turns into a full-scale street fight in which the three boys brutally attack Osman while Leigh-Anne looks on.
After Leigh-Anne returns home, she is visited by the police, who want to question her related to an attack on Hassan Osman, who had died as a result of the beating. She leaves to go to the police station with them and sees her three friends being taken away, with Robbie still wearing the bloodstained jumper that he wore during the attack.
The last scenes show Leigh-Anne crying uncontrollably in police custody after her daughter has been handed over to Social Services. Her social worker says that nobody was planning to remove her daughter, and she had been speaking to Osman about his own daughter Julie's issues. Julie tells the police that she is pregnant with Gavin's baby.
Barbara Jane Horrocks is a British actress. She portrayed the roles of Bubble and Katy Grin in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. She was nominated for the 1993 Olivier Award for Best Actress for the title role in the stage play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, and received Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for the role in the film version of Little Voice.
'night, Mother is a play by American playwright Marsha Norman. The play won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play.
Rebecca Catherine Gibney is a New Zealand actress known for her roles on Australian television in The Flying Doctors, Halifax f.p., Packed to the Rafters, Winter and Wanted. She is a Gold Logie winner and has featured in a number of Australian films including Mental and The Dressmaker.
Between the Sheets is a 2003 British television miniseries. This dramedy depicts the romantic and sexual challenges of several different couples who are all linked in some way.
Secrets & Lies is a 1996 drama film written and directed by Mike Leigh. Led by an ensemble cast consisting of many Leigh regulars, it stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Hortense, a well-educated black middle-class London optometrist, who was adopted as a baby and has chosen to trace her family history – and discovers that her birth mother, Cynthia, played by Brenda Blethyn, is a working-class white woman with a dysfunctional family. Claire Rushbrook co-stars as Cynthia's other daughter Roxanne, while Timothy Spall and Phyllis Logan portray Cynthia's brother and sister-in-law, who have secrets of their own affecting their everyday family life.
Brenda Blethyn is an English actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, and two Academy Award nominations.
Blackrock is a 1997 Australian teen drama thriller film produced by David Elfick and Catherine Knapman, directed by Steven Vidler with the screenplay by Nick Enright. Marking Vidler's directorial debut, the film was adapted from the play of the same name, also written by Enright, which was inspired by the murder of Leigh Leigh. The film stars Laurence Breuls, Simon Lyndon and Linda Cropper, and also features the first credited film performance of Heath Ledger. The film follows Jared (Breuls), a young surfer who witnesses his friends raping a girl. When she is found murdered the next day, Jared is torn between revealing what he saw and protecting his friends.
Lovely and Amazing is a 2001 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Nicole Holofcener.
Anne Frank: The Whole Story is a 2001 two-part biographical war drama television miniseries based on the 1998 book Anne Frank: The Biography by Melissa Müller. The television miniseries aired on ABC on May 20 and 21, 2001. The television miniseries starred Ben Kingsley, Brenda Blethyn, Hannah Taylor-Gordon and Lili Taylor. Controversially, but in keeping with the claim made by Melissa Müller, the television miniseries asserts that the anonymous betrayer of the Frank family was the office cleaner, when in fact the betrayer's identity has never been established. A disagreement between the producers of the television miniseries and the Anne Frank Foundation about the validity of this and other details led to the withdrawal of their endorsement of the dramatization, which prevented the use of any quotations from the writings of Anne Frank appearing within the television miniseries. Both Ben Kingsley and Hannah Taylor-Gordon received Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations for their performances as Anne Frank and Otto Frank, respectively.
Hannah Martin is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Neighbours, played by Rebecca Ritters. She made her first on-screen appearance on 20 July 1992. Hannah is the only child of Philip and Julie Martin and the younger sister to Michael and Debbie. The Martin family were written out in 1999 and Hannah departed on 20 October 1999. In 2005, Ritters reprised her role for a brief cameo in the show's 20th anniversary episode.
Clubland, internationally known as Introducing the Dwights, is a 2007 Australian comedy-drama film, directed by Cherie Nowlan, written by Keith Thompson, and starring Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn and Emma Booth. The film was nominated for eleven AFI awards, winning the award for best supporting actress for Emma Booth. It sold to Warner Independent Pictures for $4.1 million, after debuting at Sundance Film Festival, where it gained standing ovations. The film opened in the U.S. on 4 July holiday weekend, the first Australian film ever to do so.
Oliver Haden is a British actor best known for his role in British film Blue Ice. He also worked at the Langley Academy as deputy-head teacher and teachers 6th form Drama.
Amma Asante is a British filmmaker, screenwriter, former actress, and Chancellor at Norwich University of the Arts, who was born in London to parents from Ghana. Her love for the film industry started when she received her first role in BBC's Grange Hill. Asante wrote and produced the 1998 BBC Two series Brothers and Sisters, starring David Oyelowo. She was a childhood friend of model Naomi Campbell, whom she met when they were seven years old.
Olive Kitteridge is a 2008 novel by American author Elizabeth Strout. The novel provides a portrait of the title character and a number of recurring characters in the coastal town of Crosby, Maine. It takes the form of 13 short stories that are interrelated but discontinuous in terms of narrative.
Grown-Ups is a 1980 British BBC television film devised and directed by Mike Leigh. It stars Lesley Manville, Philip Davis, Brenda Blethyn, Janine Duvitski, Lindsay Duncan and Sam Kelly. It was edited by Robin Sales and produced by Louis Marks for the BBC, and originally shown on BBC 2 on 28 November 1980.
Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic is a 1975 American psychological drama television film directed by Richard Donner and written by Richard and Esther Shapiro. The film stars Linda Blair as the title character. It also stars Larry Hagman, Verna Bloom, and William Daniels.
Mysterious Creatures is a 2006 British indie drama, directed by David Evans, and starring Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn and Rebekah Staton. It is a true story of a married couple struggling to cope with the demands of their daughter with Asperger syndrome.
Blockers is a 2018 American sex comedy film directed by Kay Cannon in her directorial debut and written by Brian and Jim Kehoe, and starring John Cena, Leslie Mann, and Ike Barinholtz with supporting roles by Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan, Gideon Adlon, Graham Phillips, Miles Robbins, Jimmy Bellinger, Colton Dunn, Sarayu Blue, Gary Cole, Gina Gershon, June Diane Raphael, and Hannibal Buress. It tells the story of a trio of parents who try to stop their respective daughters from losing their virginity on prom night. The title of the film is a reference to the act of "cockblocking", with marketing materials displaying a rooster above the title.
Rocks is a 2019 British coming-of-age drama film directed by Sarah Gavron. The film stars Bukky Bakray as Olushola, nicknamed "Rocks", a Black British teenage girl living in Hackney, London, whose single mother abandons her and her younger brother Emmanuel, forcing them to try to avoid being taken into social services.
