Movies by Maxine Peake

The Theory of Everything

The Theory of Everything

The Theory of Everything is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde.

Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1980

Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1980

After 6 years of brutal murders, the West Yorkshire Police fear that they may have already interviewed The Ripper and let him back into the world to continue his reign of terror upon the citizens of Yorkshire. Assistant Chief Constable of the Manchester Police, Peter Hunter, is called in to oversee the West Yorkshire Police's Ripper investigation and see what they could have missed.

The Falling

The Falling

England, 1969. The fascinating Abbie and the troubled Lydia are great friends. After an unexpected tragedy occurs in the strict girls' school they attend, a mysterious epidemic of fainting breaks out that threatens the mental sanity and beliefs of the tormented people involved, both teachers and students.

Private Peaceful

Private Peaceful

Set in the fields of Devon and the WW1 battlefields of Flanders, two brothers fall for the same girl while contending with the pressures of their feudal family life, the war, and the price of courage and cowardice.

Funny Cow

Funny Cow

A comedian uses her troubled past as material for her stand-up routine, trying to rise up through the comedy circuit by playing Northern England's working men's clubs.

Dance First

Dance First

Parisian bon vivant, World War II Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband and recluse…Samuel Beckett lived a life of many parts. Titled after Beckett’s famous ethos “Dance first, think later”, the film is a sweeping account of the life of this 20th-century icon.

Be Still My Beating Heart

Be Still My Beating Heart

Two adult sisters exist dysfunctionally, each limited by illnesses affecting both body and mind — one physically and the other psychologically.

Run & Jump

Run & Jump

After a stroke leaves her husband disabled and fundamentally changed, a spirited Irish wife struggles to keep her family members together. All the while they are under the microscope of an American researcher documenting their recovery process.

I Swear

I Swear

John Davidson, diagnosed with Tourette's at 15 and targeted as insane by his peers, struggled with a condition few had witnessed. Campaigning for Tourette's as an adult, he accepted his MBE from the Queen in 2019.

Hancock & Joan

Hancock & Joan

Drama which tells the story of comedian Tony Hancock's love affair with his friend's wife, and her fight to save the man and his career.

Choked Up

Choked Up

A politician learns just how quickly things can go terribly wrong when a career-defining live TV interview goes off the rails due to a surprise coughing attack.

Men Who Sleep in Cars

Men Who Sleep in Cars

Three men in modern Manchester spend each night sleeping in their cars. How did they end up in this situation? How do they cope? Michael Symmons Roberts's verse drama explores the world of the invisible modern homeless - not asleep in a shop doorway, not asleep in a shop doorway, but no less desperate.

The Priest

The Priest

Johnny Marr has teamed up with the award-winning actor Maxine Peake to create a new project which sets Peake’s spoken word performances to Marr’s instrumental soundscapes. ‘The Priest’ is based upon the characters that Joe Gallagher met on the streets in the first few days after becoming homeless in Edinburgh. Gallagher wrote a diary of his experiences for the Big Issue under the pseudonym James Campbell when he first became homeless in May 2015 and continued until he found a new home in March 2016. This short film was filmed in Manchester a...

Cake

Cake

Two women sit in a barren dystopian wasteland discussing the best way to die.

Hamlet

Hamlet

From its sell-out run at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre comes a film version of this unique and critically acclaimed production of Hamlet with BAFTA-nominee Maxine Peake in the title role. This ground-breaking stage production, directed by Sarah Frankcom, was the Royal Exchange's fastest-selling show in a decade.

The Real Anne: Unfinished Business

The Real Anne: Unfinished Business

The story of Merseyside mum and campaigner Anne Williams, who lost her son Keven. For nearly three decades she fought the English establishment to expose the truth of what really happened at Hillsborough, and to try and get justice for the 97.

Fanny Lye Deliver'd

Fanny Lye Deliver'd

On an isolated English farm in 1657, Fanny lives a quiet life with her oppressive husband John and their young son. One day their life is rocked with the arrival of young couple Thomas and Rebecca who claim to have been robbed and need a place to stay. But are these strangers really who they say they are?

Peterloo

Peterloo

An epic portrayal of the events surrounding the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter’s Field in Manchester turned into one of the bloodiest and most notorious episodes in British history. The massacre saw British government forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathered to demand political reforms and protest against rising levels of poverty.

Ceremony: The Return of Friedrich Engels

Ceremony: The Return of Friedrich Engels

Following the artist Phil Collins' search for a decommissioned statue of German philosopher Friedrich Engels in eastern Ukraine, and documenting its journey and arrival to a homecoming party in Manchester.

Would Like To Meet

Would Like To Meet

A single mum looks for love in the lonely-hearts pages, but someone has already decided to play cupid - her eight year-old son…