Tender Loving Care

Mike Leigh made Tender Loving Care in the wake of Hard Truths, and has said it is most likely his last film, citing the physical toll of illness. It was shot in London, developed through the long improvised rehearsal process that has shaped his work since the 1970s, and produced by his regular collaborator Georgina Lowe with Film4 and Thin Man Films. It premiered at Telluride in September 2026, then played Special Presentations at Toronto, the main competition at San Sebastián and the Main Slate of the New York Film Festival.

Kate O'Flynn leads as Amy, a devoted social worker; Alice Bailey Johnson plays Rosie, her friend and colleague, and Marion Bailey and Paul Jesson are Amy's parents. The film follows a week of casework and family life, and it moves between the flats and kitchens of Amy's clients and the house where her father's memory is beginning to slip. Lucy Bristow is the cinematographer, and the comedy, as ever, grows out of character rather than plotting.

The critical response was unusually unified: 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 86, with Deadline calling it one of his best. It returns Leigh to the small-scale domestic register of Life Is Sweet and Another Year, and to his lifelong subject — decent, ordinary people doing their best with little — while making room for the professional carers whose work British cinema rarely stops to look at.