It has today been confirmed that Tim Mielant‘s (Wil, “The Responder”, “The Terror”) feature film adaptation of Claire Keegan‘s Orwell Prize-Winning historical fiction novella “Small Things Like These” will open this year’s Berlinale on February 15.
Directed by Mielant, from a script adapted by Enda Walsh (Hunger, The House), and starring Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer, Anthropoid), who previously worked with Mielant on the third series of “Peaky Blinders”, Small Things Likes These reveals the truth about Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries – horrific institutions run by Roman Catholic institutions from the 18th to the late 20th centuries, purportedly to house “fallen women”. Set over the Christmas period of 1985, it follows devoted father and coal merchant Bill Furlong (Murphy) who discovers shocking secrets which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
The film also features Ciarán Hinds (Mary Reilly, There Will Be Blood), Emily Watson (Cemetery Junction, “Chernobyl”), Amy De Bhrún (“Line of Duty”, Apocalypse Clown), Joanne Crawford (Ballywater, Sacrifice), Eileen Walsh (The Magdalene Sisters, Eden), Abby Fitz (The Cellar, “The Woman in the Wall”) and Cillian O’Gairbhi (“Blood”).
Last year, Keegan was named “Author of the Year” in conjunction with the Irish Book Awards and her 2010 novel “Foster” was previously adapted into the Academy Award-nominated Irish language film An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl).
Commenting on today’s news, Carlo Chatrian, Berlinale Artistic Director said, “With Small Things Like These, Tim Mielants tells the story of a man of few words, with wide open eyes, as clear as the skies of Ireland … In The Quiet Girl we already had sense of Claire Keegan’s skill in portraying small, apparently simple characters and making them unforgettable; here her delicate, rich and yet down-to-earth writing finds a great interpreter in Cillian Murphy.”
The Berlinale takes place from the 15th through to the 25th of February.
