Cillian Murphy returns to Ireland [bande-annonce]

In Small Things Like These, he will face a relentless nun played by Emily Watson.

After many projects far from his native country, Cillian Murphy returns to Ireland to tell a historical and dramatic episode of his country. Directed by Tim Mielants, friend of the British actor, and director of some episodes of Peaky Blinders, Small Things Like These is the first feature film from actor Thomas Shelby since his Oscar win for his title role in Oppenheimer. Premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, the film revisits an episode in Irish history when young women deemed to be of easy morals and orphans were sent to religious institutions that resembled prisons.

In 1985, Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) works hard to support his family by mining and selling coal. As he prepares to make a delivery to the local convent, he witnesses a scene that leaves him perplexed. A mother forces her screaming daughter into the establishment. He decides to investigate and discover what lies within the four walls of the convent.

His personal investigation leads him to unearth memories he thought were buried: that of his mother's death, but also of his link with these institutions covered by the Catholic Church of Ireland and whose abuses are then kept secret. He finds himself alone in his fight against the Church which governs life in the surrounding area, and against the sisters running the convent. Among them is Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves, Anna Karenina, Dune: Prophecy), relentless. And although he has “things best ignored”as a woman warns, what this man is about to discover will be a media bombshell in Ireland a few years later.

Small Things Like These is inspired by Magdalene Laundries which would be translated into French as Magdalene laundries or convents. These establishments existed since the Victorian era and were similar to asylums and workhouses. Run by the Catholic Church, they housed women rejected by society, women considered to be fallen and of loose morals – such as prostitutes, victims of rape or incest, abandoned girls, orphans, etc. In total, 30,000 women between the 19th and 20th centuries stayed in Magdalene convents, and the last of them closed its doors in Ireland in 1996.

Known for being harsh and abusive sexually, psychologically and physically, these institutions eventually strayed from their original mission and became the subject of a scandal when, in 1993, graves were discovered, confirming the institutions' excesses. This inspired the writer Claire Keegan, who wrote Small Things Like These, from which the film is now based.

As an Irish citizen and artist, Cillian Murphy spoke about this subject to Vanity Fair :

“This story is so deeply connected to the Irish people, our history, our culture, our trauma, and everything else. I think sometimes art is a gentler way to approach or confront these kinds of issues than government reports or academic papers.”

This is not the first time a film has been made about this subject. In 2002, The Magdalene Sisters by Peter Mullan, about three women forcibly locked up in these institutions – the first raped by her cousin, the second considered too pretty and dangerous for boys, the third a single mother – won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Small Things Like These will be released in the United States on November 8. In France, no date has been announced.

Cillian Murphy will be back in 28 Years Later, “in a surprising way!”