At the Berlin International Film Festival, the film "Small Things Like These" was premiered

“It was a collective trauma for people of a certain age, and I do think they were still processing that,” stated Cillian Murphy about the theme of his latest film at the Berlin International Film Festival, which started on February 15, 2024. The film, “Small Things Like These,” (according to the book by Claire Keegan) directed by Tim Mielants, tells the story of a coal merchant grappling with uncertainty about saving a girl from the “Magdalene laundry.”

Magdalene laundries were institutions in Ireland where women and girls with troubled pasts, often involuntarily placed, were forced to do laundry, and many of them suffered there. Singer Sinéad O’Connor spent 18 months in such a laundry for truancy. In the film, co-produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity studio, alongside Cillian Murphy, the cast includes Emily Watson and Michelle Fairley.