Cillian Murphy's new film Small Things Like These to be released in November

Sarah Slater

Oscar award winner Cillian Murphy is soon to hit our film screens again as he wrestles with the Catholic Church in the Co Wexford-set movie Small Things Like These.

The film was shot in New Ross in the early months of last year, and based on the novel of the same name by award-winning Claire Keegan, who hails from Clonegal on the Carlow-Wicklow border.

Murphy plays a hard-working coal merchant and father who struggles with Church-sanctioned cruelty in Magdalene Laundries in the local area who struggles with the complicit silence in the Lionsgate drama which hits cinemas on November 8th.

The Canadian-American entertainment company Lionsgate have now released a spoiler trailer to whet the appetite of film goers.

Delivering coal to the convent, Murphy’s character Bill Furlong witnesses a mother forcing her young daughter inside such a laundry against her will.

The film also stars Emily Watson and well-known Irish actors Ciarán Hinds and Kin star Clare Dunne, along with scores of locals from New Ross and the county.

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.

Furlong is warned in the trailer about not interfering, as he sees first-hand the cruelty taking place in the local convent.

The last of the Magdalene Laundries were closed down in 1996, followed by well-publicised investigations into the Catholic Church. Enda Walsh wrote the screenplay adaptation for the film for director Tim Mielants.

Small Things Like These is also 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.

Murphy won his Oscar for his leading role in Oppenheimer.

The film initially premiered at Berlinale as the Opening Night Film earlier this year.