Mum & Dad

A Polish immigrant named Lena is employed as a cleaner at Heathrow Airport. She misses the bus after work, but luckily her friend Birdie cheerfully says that Lena can spend the night at her family’s nearby house. Lena hardly suspects that she’s putting herself into the psychopathic hands of mum and dad, who have created their own world with its own set of rules at the end of the runway. Although it begins like one of Mike Leigh’s social dramas, the movie quickly degenerates into a gory and perverse game of survival in which the initially unsure Lena manages to score points with mum, gaining her attention and perhaps even her trust. Reveling in extremely black humor, this larger-than-life parody skewers the everyday rituals of British family life. The director adds: “I grew up in the shadow of Heathrow Airport.... The sound that you hear in this film is the sound of my childhood.” Mum & Dad was shown on British television over Christmas and created quite a scandal.