Starring: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Brenda Blethyn, Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Claire Rushbrook

My First Time kicks off with Mike Leigh’s 1996 Palme d’Or winner Secrets & Lies, a film that shot up Shay’s watchlist during Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s press tour for 2024’s Hard Truths (a perfect movie). Jean-Baptiste praised Leigh’s meticulous improvisational rehearsal processes, a defining feature of his oeuvre.

Join Shay as she watches their first collaboration… for the first time!

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She’s shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), a working-class white woman.