Michelle Austin and Bryony Miller and star in the latest film from Britain’s most important social-observer/filmmaker, Mike Leigh.

Leigh did “Vera Drake” and “Secrets & Lies” and Happy-Go-Lucky” and “Mr. Turner” and “Naked” and “Peterloo” and “Life is Sweet” and “High Hopes” and “Topsy Turvy.” His films aren’t always sharply-observed dramas and dramedies about the working class. Sometimes they’re sharply-observed portraits of Gilbert and Sullivan or the painter J.M.W. Turner.

Leigh is the last of his generation of British filmmakers, directors who came up during the “kitchen sink realism” of the early ’60s and made films that were a progression from that

We face his and is characters’ “Hard Truths” on Oct. 5 in North America.