The Lost Children of Tuam (2026)

Catherine Corless (Monica Dolan) is undertaking some research for an essay she wants to write when she hears tell of some bones that were found in a field near what used to be a children's home run by some nuns. Everyone just assumed that that those were unidentified "famine bones" but as she delves a little deeper she discovers certain inconsistencies in that explanation. Not only do things not add up, but the absence of official data or even graves starts her on an investigative journalistic exercise for which both she and husband Aiden (Andrew Bennett) are ill-equipped. This is a dramatisation of a true story that I recall rocking the media world at the time, and by using two really quite understated acting efforts we are presented with something that allows a gently accruing sense of shock and disgust to develop in a poignantly effective fashion as the truth gradually emerges. I though Dolan brought something of the Brenda Blethyn to her characterful performance as she delivers an honest and engaging depiction of a very "ordinary" woman rising to a challenge with a dogged determination that doesn't care if she ruffles feathers and quite literally digs up evidence of historical atrocities on an eye-watering scale. The story re-energises some of the issues raised last year in Cillian Murphy's "Steve" and like that, it illustrates the complicity of the State , the Church and even elements of the broader, ashamed, population in an Irish society that took a very unforgiving view on what I think Charles Dickens named the "unfortunate women". It's really quite a difficult film to get through, but given it isn't remotely visually graphic, that's a testament to the horror it really reports as seen through the eyes of a woman determined to see some sort of justice done - in some cases almost a century later.