Cillian Murphyas Bill FurlongThe story
About Small Things Like These
In a small Irish town in the weeks before Christmas 1985, a quiet coal merchant with five daughters makes a delivery to the local convent and sees how the girls and young women held there are being treated. As his family gets ready for Christmas, memories of his own fatherless childhood come back, and he has to decide whether to break the town's silence about an institution the Church runs, in a story rooted in the real history of Ireland's Magdalene laundries.
The CineClaus verdict
Cillian Murphy barely speaks and still carries every frame.
Tim Mielants keeps the film dim and patient, and the season works as a quiet rebuke: lights and charity in a town that has agreed not to look behind the convent wall. This is a hard watch about the real history of the Magdalene laundries, and the ending offers hope at a price it refuses to tidy away.
Christmas is the backdrop here, never the comfort. Choose an evening when you want something to sit with afterwards, and give it your full attention.
The family desk
Can the kids watch?
Our take: not for children: nothing is graphic, but the abuse of girls held by a convent is the subject and the dread is sustained, so we'd say mid-teens and up, ideally with a chat afterwards.
Content advice & accessibility
- Our age guidance
- Editorial, separate from the official 12A certificate, and never looser than it.
- Audio description
- Check your chosen service and edition for supported tracks.
