Peterloo

Peterloo (2018) is Mike Leigh's historical drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It rebuilds the day in the summer of 1819 when mounted troops rode into a peaceful crowd of tens of thousands gathered in Manchester to demand the right to vote.

The story opens with young soldier Joseph trudging home from Waterloo. The fighting is over, but what waits for him is mass unemployment, dear bread and the simmering fury of working families with nothing to eat. Their hope rests on orator Henry Hunt, who calls the people to a vast open-air assembly — which the authorities read as the beginning of a revolt. As the day approaches, the two sides press closer together, and you can feel where it's heading long before it arrives. Rory Kinnear and Maxine Peake lead the cast.

Leigh skips the tidy pageant version of history for a slow, painstaking reconstruction of how poverty and elite fear collided in one square. The film runs two and a half hours and refuses to rush — its long scenes of rallies and arguments play almost like documentary. It suits viewers drawn to British history and to cinema that values the texture of the real over pace. Stream Peterloo (2018) online on iFILM.