The legendary English filmmaker gushed about Sean Baker's Palme d'Or winner during a recording of THR's 'Awards Chatter' ...

"By the time an actor gets to the point of improvisation in a Mike Leigh process, they've got a whole person that they're working with," Marianne Jean-Baptiste tells Newsweek.

Leigh never lets his audience escape the underlying humiliation and helplessness Pansy feels, and Pansy never allows herself ...

In partnership with his actors, Leigh excavates and displays the most vulnerable emotions and experiences a person can have, his films slowly building to cathartic crescendos, with glimmers of hope ...