Small Things Like These (with introduction)

Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant and a man of few words, lives in Wexford, Ireland, with his wife and children in the 1980s. It is almost Christmas, which means he is particularly busy delivering briquettes and charcoal. During his delivery round, he also visits a convent run by Mother Superior Mary. It is a so-called Magdalene asylum, a place where unmarried pregnant women are housed to work all day in laundries. He is struck by how harshly these ‘fallen’ women are treated by the nuns, and this brings back memories of his own childhood. He never knew his father, so perhaps his mother had also been in such a place.

When the abuses that had taken place in the Magdalene laundries became widely known in the 1990s, there was widespread outrage. The Irish state and the Catholic Church apologised profusely and offered financial compensation, but the damage had already been done. Claire Keegan wrote the novel Small Things Like These about it, and Tim Mielants adapted it for the screen. Starring Cillian Murphy and Emily Watson.