Aoife Kelleher, director of Mrs Robinson and One Million Dubliners, asks us to again consider a national trauma that still requires some processing: the mistreatment of women and girls in the Magdalene laundries and mother and baby homes.
The material has been dealt with in films such as Margo Harkin’s exhaustingly moving Stolen, but Kelleher, a diligent film-maker, persuasively make the case for another airing. Aside from anything else, there are more stories to be heard. As one participant here explains, such tales are testimony and, therefore, evidence.
Evidence matters for her key players. Kelleher focuses on a group of women who fought to reveal the connections between these “private institutions” and a state that looked to now be washing its hands of them.
As first-hand accounts confirm, the gardaí often returned escapees to the laundries as if the women – who had committed no offence – were on the run from prison. It is a tortuous, traumatic journey that ultimately takes the campaigners to the United Nations.
Testimony: Aoife Kelleher persuasively makes case for further airing of Magdalene injustices
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Key among the Justice for Magdalenes Research group is a diligent lawyer named Maeve O’Rourke (daughter of the broadcaster Seán) who was encouraged in her efforts by the devastating testimony of the abuse survivor Michael O’Brien on RTÉ’s Questions and Answers in 2009.
O’Rourke remains, even for those of us perplexed by legal complexities, admirably focused in her lucid explanations of the strategies undertaken. The team know just which sections of the official reports and commissions of investigations to tease out.
The documentary has its awkward moments. The slow-motion re-enactments add nothing to the heartfelt testimonies. An enormous information drop over the closing credits – including responses from several interested parties – features far too much text for the average cinemagoer to absorb.
None of this, however, can detract from the raw power of the stories told. Philomena Lee is among those adding to a catalogue of indignities that continues to defy belief.
Others, not unreasonably, talk of children being “trafficked” to the United States. “It didn’t matter about religion – it was about the money,” an early contributor says.
The film, edited with characteristic fluency by Emer Reynolds, makes no pretence that all issues have been tidied away. But it does at least allow that the survivors are achieving the status of national heroes. Few will complain at that.
In cinemas from Friday, November 21st
