Friday, 4 September 2026 at 9 pm
Directed by: Mike Leigh
United Kingdom, 1990
North London, summer. Andy, a chef at a large London catering venue, impulsively buys a run-down fast-food van, planning to refurbish it and deliver fast food around the neighbourhood. Wendy, his hardworking and good-natured wife, is sceptical about the project but understands her husband's ambitions. Their 22-year-old twin daughters, Natalie and Nicola, have completely different views on the matter: the tomboyish Natalie thinks it's a good idea if it will make her father happy, while the bitter, withdrawn Nicola scornfully dismisses Andy as a ‘capitalist’.
Later that night, Nicola binges on chocolate and crisps, then forces herself to be sick. Natalie, awake in the next bedroom and looking through travel brochures for the US, overhears her; her reaction suggests she is painfully familiar with the behaviour. Aubrey, a hyperactive and emotionally unstable family friend, opens a Parisian-style restaurant and offers Wendy a job as a waitress. Wendy and Andy's initial trust in Aubrey's plan is undermined by the restaurant's unorthodox interior design and its menu…
Critics have largely agreed that Mike Leigh's third feature film, Life Is Sweet, masterfully captures the authentic life of a working-class family, thanks to Leigh's “humane direction” and the fascinatingly natural performances. Through so-called slices of life, the film portrays, despite its class-specific setting, universal human experiences and family dynamics, achieving the extraordinary by dealing with the ordinary, everyday existence. Leigh has time and again proven himself a master of realism and character studies, and Life Is Sweet, a humorous genre drama, was not only a critics' favourite but also his most commercially successful film to date. With it, he heralded the construction of an artistically exceptionally potent body of work, a fact convincingly confirmed by the films that followed.
Comment by: Damir Radić
Tickets for the screening on 4 September 2026 at 9 pm can be purchased online HERE, as well as at the Surogatkino KIC box office one hour before the start.