Maxine Peake and Rory Kinnear in Mike Leigh’s critically acclaimed drama about the reformist movement of 1819.

With the dust yet to settle on the battle at Waterloo, a shell-shocked soldier returns to his home in Manchester where a life of stark inequality awaits, dividing the working-class and the landed gentry.

Leigh spares no detail in this immersive, painterly reenactment of the harrowing events that took place at St. Peter’s Field, where the desperate many took a stand against the privileged few. This is a cinematic history lesson at its most compelling.