Oscar winner Cillian Murphy plays a coal merchant and father haunted by secret abuses in a local convent sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the trailer for Small Things Like This from Lionsgate ahead of a Nov. 8 theatrical release.
Delivering coal to the convent, Bill Furlong (Murphy) witnesses a mother forcing her young daughter inside and against her will. “Mommy, please! Stop it! No please! I’m not going in there,” she screams as a silent Furlong looks on in the short teaser.
Set in 1985 just ahead of Christmas, Furlong, as he makes further deliveries to the convent, is forced to confront his own unspoken grief and childhood trauma, which leads him into making a moral choice. “You want to watch what you say, about what’s there,” Furlong is warned in the trailer as he sees first-hand the atrocities taking place in the local convent.
Adapted from Claire Keegan’s prize-winning novella, the backdrop for Small Things Like This is the real history of the Magdalene Laundries, asylums and workhouses run by the Catholic Church in Ireland purportedly for the purpose of employing and educating “fallen women.”
The Magdalene Laundries were eventually closed down in 1996, and that was followed by a well-publicized and investigated scandal in Ireland involving the Catholic Church. Enda Walsh wrote the screenplay adaptation for the film from director Tim Mielants and also starring Emily Watson.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s review out of the Berlin Film Festival, where the film served as the opening night presentation, reads: “The actor’s work here could scarcely be more of a contrast to his fine-grained characterization as the soft-spoken but imposing title figure in Oppenheimer, with his hint of arrogance that chafes against so many peers. Bill is a reserved but profoundly decent man who appears to have spent his adult years taking up as little space as possible. Murphy fleshes him out with loaded silences and pained gestures, his pale, expressive eyes conveying a world of hurt, of trauma yanked back to the surface by startling experience.”
Small Things Like This is produced by Murphy and his Big Things Films partner Alan Moloney. It was financed and produced by Artists Equity, the studio run by Ben Affleck and Murphy’s Oppenheimer co-star Matt Damon.
Along with Murphy, Moloney, and Damon, Catherine Magee and Drew Vinton also produced. Affleck, Kevin Halloran, and Michael Joe executive produced.
