Cillian Murphy’s Magdalene laundries film grips audience at Berlin festival

The mood in the Berlin cinema was as heavy as several sacks of Cillian Murphy’s character’s best coal when the credits rolled on Small Things Like These, the actor’s new film which celebrated its world premiere at the Berlin film festival on Thursday.

The audience was gripped by a movie dedicated “to more than 10,000 young women sent to Magdalene institutions for ‘penance and rehabilitation’ – and the children taken from them”.

By sticking closely to the Claire Keegan novella of the same name, however, the film is very much about the plain people of Ireland that disappeared these women – and the religious institutions that kept them gone.

Set in a dark and mournful New Ross, Co Wexford, in 1985, the slow-burn film lures in viewers as lingering scenes build a relentless momentum. The internal conflict and buried grief of Keegan’s coalman Bill Furlong, and the oppressive power of Catholicism, Irish-style, come alive in Murphy’s eyes.

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At Thursday’s press conference in the city, all eyes were on Murphy as leading man, co-producer and best actor Oscar-nominee – not to mention strong favourite for the best actor Bafta on Sunday.

This was a “serendipitous project”, he said, from securing the rights to bringing on board some of his favourite creative friends, including Peaky Blinders director Tim Mielants; long-time writer and collaborator Enda Walsh; and his onetime Disco Pigs costar Eileen Walsh.

For Murphy, coalman Bill Furlong’s fateful encounters in a Wexford convent are about “a Christian man trying to do a Christian act in a dysfunctional Christian society”.

“It asks a lot of questions about complicity, silence and shame,” he said. “But I don’t think it is the duty of art to answer those questions but provoke. It’s easier to absorb than an academic or government report.”

Costar Emily Watson agreed that Murphy’s Bill is “not political or articulate” yet his conscience forces him to act. “It is the most delicate and beautiful thing,” she said.

Film star Matt Damon is no stranger to Irish shores, but this script tells of a very different Ireland. And he was in Berlin in a different role: financing and co-producing through his new Actors Equity company.

He said the project “fell into my lap” when Murphy told him of his new project during a break in filming Oppenheimer in the New Mexico desert.

“One of the things that attracted us was these great artists grappling with this trauma,” said Damon. “It was about facilitating an environment where they could explore these things and getting out of their way.”

Another Keegan story, Foster, debuted as An Cailín Ciúin/The Quiet Girl at the 2022 Berlin festival and went on to become the first Irish-language film nominated for an International Feature Oscar.

Asked about his own Oscar nomination and Sunday’s Bafta awards, Murphy was characteristically low key: “I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.”

Co-produced by Screen Ireland and Wilder Films, the film has yet to secure an Irish distributor or release.

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