Thursday, 3 September 2026 at 9 pm
High Hopes
Directed by: Mike Leigh
United Kingdom, 1988
Cyril and Shirley, a motorbike courier and a gardener, are a couple who live in a flat in the central London district of King's Cross. They advocate Marxism and workers' rights, with Cyril being more philosophical in his political views and not believing that a working-class uprising will ever happen. As they contend with their more militant friend Suzi, whom Cyril criticises for what he sees as a hypocritical stance, and a stranger named Wayne who has just arrived in town, Cyril and Shirley find themselves at odds with each other over the subject of children; Shirley is seriously considering having a child, but Cyril thinks it's a bad idea given the state of the world.
Cyril has a narcissistic sister, Valerie, a newly well-off snob whose husband Martin is a used car salesman. Martin neglects Valerie, being chronically interested in adultery. Cyril and Valerie's seventy-year-old mother, Mrs Bender, who lives alone, begins to show signs of dementia. She has new neighbours, the wealthy, snobbish married couple Rupert and Lætitia...
In 1988, Mike Leigh and producer Simon Channing Williams founded the film company Thin Men Films in London, with the intention of producing Leigh's feature films. With the exception of his long-ago 1971 debut, Bleak Moments, Leigh had, up until 1988, working exclusively in television, on TV series and TV films, and he could never get financial backing for his planned feature films because he would most often seek it without a finished script, given that his work was based on long rehearsals with actors involving a great deal of improvisation, which is what his screenplays were actually based on. By founding his own film company, Leigh was finally in a position to begin creating an oeuvre of feature-length films, the first of which was Great Expectations.
It is a humorous drama which, like all of Leigh's films, is based on “hard” realism and lived-in performances, but in this case, by bringing together members of different classes, and on sharp political insights, offering a lucid commentary on the era of Margaret Thatcher's rule in Great Britain. The film was very successful, winning the FIPRESCI award from the International Federation of Film Critics in the Venice Festival's Parallel Sections, and was nominated for a European Film Award in the categories of Best Film, Best Actress (Ruth Sheen), Best Supporting Actress (Edna Doré), and Best Composer (Andrew Dickson) – confirming all nominations except for Best Film.
Comment by: Damir Radić
Tickets for the screening on 3 September 2026 at 9 pm can be purchased online HERE, as well as at the Surogatkino KIC box office one hour before the start.