{ "id": "ep24cpmfx2", "slug": "small-things-like-these", "title": "Small Things Like These", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-2023-and-2024", "label": "Drama films 2023 and 2024", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-2023-and-2024" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-2023-and-2024.alpha-o-to-y", "label": "Titles O to Y", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-2023-and-2024.alpha-o-to-y" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "Western Europe · 2021 and later: Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "path": [ { "id": "geo.weu", "label": "Western Europe", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2021", "label": "Western Europe · 2021 and later", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2021" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2021.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2021.culture" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t2021.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Small Things Like These: Claire Keegan's 2021 Booker-nominated novella and Tim Mielants' 2024 film starring Cillian Murphy as coal merchant Bill Furlong, set in 1985 New Ross, Ireland, confronting Magdalene laundry abuses.", "snippet": "Small Things Like These: Claire Keegan's 2021 Booker-nominated novella and Tim Mielants' 2024 film starring Cillian Murphy as coal merchant Bill Furlong, set in 1985 New Ross, Ireland, confronting Magdalene laundry abuses.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-2023-and-2024.alpha-o-to-y", "markdown": "# Small Things Like These\n\n**Small Things Like These** is a 2021 novella by the Irish writer Claire Keegan, nominated for the [Booker Prize](https://www.edgepedia.org/booker-prize), and a 2024 film adapted from it. Both tell of Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in the town of New Ross, who at Christmas 1985 discovers secrets kept by the local convent and must decide whether to act against the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the [Catholic Church](https://www.edgepedia.org/catholic-church).[1](https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/reading-guide-small-things-like-these-by-claire-keegan) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these) The story is rooted in the history of Ireland's Magdalene laundries, institutions in which girls and women were confined and put to unpaid laundry work, and which operated until 1996.[3](https://thebookerprizes.com/sites/default/files/2022-09/220927%20Reading%20Guide%20Small%20Things%20Like%20These.pdf)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Source work | Novella by Claire Keegan, published November 2021, nominated for the Booker Prize[4](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/cillian-murphy-small-things-like-these-exclusive-awards-insider) • [1](https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/reading-guide-small-things-like-these-by-claire-keegan) |\n| Setting | New Ross, Ireland, at Christmas 1985[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these) |\n| Protagonist | Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and father, played in the film by Cillian Murphy[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these) |\n| Film credits | Directed by Tim Mielants, adapted by playwright Enda Walsh, 2024[5](https://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/reviews/13471/) |\n| Production | Produced by Murphy and Alan Moloney through Big Things Films, with Matt Damon producing via Artists Equity[4](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/cillian-murphy-small-things-like-these-exclusive-awards-insider) |\n| Release | Premiered at the Berlin Film Festival; released in North American theaters November 8, 2024; runs 1 hour 38 minutes[6](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/small-things-like-these-this-grimy-moving-portrait-1980s-ireland-knows-power-restraint) • [7](https://www.moviefone.com/movie/small-things-like-these/qspZaaE9W0cn1OfC9zSxq2/where-to-watch/) • [8](https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-c23a52e3-d4aa-4812-a9f3-03d7ddd1dda1) |\n| Reception | 94% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 123 reviews; 81% audience score[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nNew Ross, December 1985. Bill Furlong ([Cillian Murphy](https://www.edgepedia.org/cillian-murphy)) is up before dawn hauling coal through wet gray streets, a decent, unremarkable man supporting his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and five young daughters. The Catholic church is the load-bearing wall of the town: the nuns run the only school, the convent sits on the hill, and deference to it is as ordinary as the weather. The film intercuts this present with flashbacks to Bill's 1950s childhood, when his unmarried mother worked as a servant for the kindly Mrs Wilson ([Michelle Fairley](https://www.edgepedia.org/michelle-fairley)), a woman who took her in when Bill's own relatives treated her as a problem to be managed.\n\nDelivering coal to the convent, Bill notices things: girls from the laundry doing heavy work, one of them in a state that does not bear looking at, a locked door where there should not be one. He says nothing, but he cannot stop thinking. At home, Eileen counsels caution; at the pub, Mrs Kehoe (Helen Behan) is blunter, warning him where speaking out would land a man with five daughters and no leverage. The film holds one long note of moral pressure: a good man weighing the cost of a silence everyone else has already paid.\n\n**The film's centerpiece arrives when Bill, making a delivery, finds a girl locked in the convent's coal shed.** Sarah (Zara Devlin), pregnant and shivering in the freezing dark, bruised and bloody, has been banished there by the nuns. Bill lets her out, and moments later is invited inside by Sister Mary, the Mother Superior ([Emily Watson](https://www.edgepedia.org/emily-watson)), for tea and cakes. The scene plays like gothic horror even though Sister Mary barely raises her voice above a whisper: her torture implements are tea and cakes. She hands him a Christmas card addressed to Eileen with cash inside, presented as a gift but understood by both of them as a bribe, and mentions, pleasantly, that the convent runs the only school in town, where Bill's daughters study. Nothing is threatened outright; everything is threatened. Bill walks home and, on [Christmas Eve](https://www.edgepedia.org/christmas-eve), stands at his kitchen sink in a single unbroken three-minute take, scrubbing his hands, saying nothing.\n\nThe flashbacks deepen the pressure. Bill remembers his mother's death, and in a barber shop sequence a jigsaw puzzle and a barber's chair unlock a cascade of memories of Ned, the farmhand he comes to suspect was his own father. The machinery that has locked Sarah in a coal shed is the same machinery that once condemned his mother; only one generous woman's kindness saved him from that life. On Christmas morning, after a night of it sitting in him, Bill makes his decision.\n\nHe returns to the convent, takes Sarah out, and carries her openly through the town streets, locals gaping from doorways and windows, to his own front door. He brings her into his warm kitchen, where Eileen and the five daughters fall silent in shock. The film cuts to black on that image, refusing catharsis, and closes with a title card dedicated to the women who passed through the Magdalene laundries and their children, reframing everything before it as testimony.\n\n### Characters\n\nBill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) is a coal merchant and a man of very few words, whose interior life Murphy carries almost entirely in the face: pauses at doorways, a collapse on the bathroom floor played as exhaustion of the soul. His decency was inherited from his mother, and it is what finally makes silence impossible.\n\nSister Mary (Emily Watson) is the convent's Mother Superior, running a profitable laundry built on indentured servitude. Her menace is entirely polite, delivered over tea and a Christmas card, and more chilling for being wrapped in courtesy. She appears essentially in one extended scene, and it is the film's fulcrum.\n\nEileen Furlong (Eileen Walsh) is Bill's wife, practical and worried, given one strong scene of argument about what he risks. Mrs Kehoe (Helen Behan) is the pub owner who voices the town's reasonable cowardice. Sarah (Zara Devlin) is the pregnant laundry girl in the coal shed, named like Bill's mother, the film's living argument. Mrs Wilson (Michelle Fairley) is the woman who sheltered Bill's mother, the one exception the town ever allowed.\n\n### Interpretations and controversies\n\nScholarly commentary has noted the film portrays dignified, individualized everyday resistance rather than collective action, and argues it somewhat simplifies history by concentrating institutional guilt in the nuns, when complicity was spread across the whole town, as Mrs Kehoe's advice shows. The same commentary points out that redress for and remembrance of Magdalene survivors have still not been adequately addressed by the state, and Murphy has called the laundries \"a collective trauma I think that we all went through in the country and that we're all still recovering from.\"[24](https://theconversation.com/small-things-like-these-shows-the-transformative-power-of-individual-action-but-conflates-the-history-242818) The abrupt cut to black after Bill brings Sarah home struck some viewers as withholding; others read the ending exactly as intended, one girl's fate changed and one man's load lightened.[6](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/small-things-like-these-this-grimy-moving-portrait-1980s-ireland-knows-power-restraint)\n\n## The novella\n\nClaire Keegan published *Small Things Like These* in November 2021, and it was nominated for the Booker Prize.[4](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/cillian-murphy-small-things-like-these-exclusive-awards-insider) • [1](https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/reading-guide-small-things-like-these-by-claire-keegan) The story is short; one review notes it runs only 114 pages.[9](https://dq5pwpg1q8ru0.cloudfront.net/2023/12/04/13/35/27/35ef3192-e34e-4f78-855c-5f9305dfe2de/Connexion%2049-December%202023.pdf) It is set in New Ross, County Wexford, in the weeks before Christmas 1985, and follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and father of five daughters, as deliveries for the local convent bring him into contact with its secrets.[10](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-10/small-things-like-these-review-cillian-murphy-claire-keegan/105146088) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these)\n\nFurlong's own history drives the plot. He was raised by a single mother, and flashbacks to his lonely, bullied childhood in the 1950s surface as he confronts what the convent is hiding; in one encounter he finds Sarah locked in a freezing shed after she has given birth, cowering and asking where her baby is.[10](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-10/small-things-like-these-review-cillian-murphy-claire-keegan/105146088) • [23](https://www.startribune.com/review-small-things-like-these-by-claire-keegan/600120911) In the novella, the local convent's hold over the community is all-encompassing; as Bill is told, \"these nuns have a finger in every pie.\"[11](https://uvadoc.uva.es/bitstream/handle/10324/79783/TFM_F_2025_129.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1) Critics have also read it as a feminist revision of [Charles Dickens](https://www.edgepedia.org/charles-dickens)'s *A Christmas Carol*, to which the novella explicitly alludes.[12](https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/small-things-like-these/)\n\n## Historical background: the Magdalene laundries\n\nFrom 1922 until 1996, thousands of girls and women were held in Magdalene laundries in Ireland.[3](https://thebookerprizes.com/sites/default/files/2022-09/220927%20Reading%20Guide%20Small%20Things%20Like%20These.pdf) After the formation of the [Irish Free State](https://www.edgepedia.org/irish-free-state) in 1922, the Catholic-run laundries served as carceral places of containment, used by church and state for girls and women accused of moral transgressions such as unmarried motherhood and sexual promiscuity.[13](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-0424.12667) Ten Catholic Magdalen laundries operated in Ireland between 1922 and 1996.[14](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvpj76pf) Most women were placed there by families as a result of sexual transgressions; a small percentage arrived through the criminal justice system, following a conviction, as a condition of probation, or after release from prison.[15](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/imaginative-criminology/historical-spaces-of-confinement-2-magdalene-laundries/FB32866FD65A81A9EA53ED6524187EC5)\n\nThe institutions were not unique to Ireland, but the Irish laundries are noted for their longevity and severity, and they survived longer than their British counterparts.[16](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26326663261457541) • [17](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society-politics-law/modern-slavery/content-section-4.4) For many years the Catholic Church and the Irish Government denied complicity in their operation.[17](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society-politics-law/modern-slavery/content-section-4.4) State involvement was examined by an Inter-Departmental Committee chaired by the independent chair, Senator Martin McAleese, whose findings were published on 5 February 2013.[18](https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-justice-home-affairs-and-migration/collections/report-of-the-inter-departmental-committee-to-establish-the-facts-of-state-involvement-with-the-magdalen-laundries/) The last laundry closed in 1996, which places the story's 1985 setting within living memory of the practice.[19](https://apnews.com/article/34a897fb4f611d9454259f293e7864e8)\n\n## The film adaptation\n\nThe film was directed by [Tim Mielants](https://www.edgepedia.org/tim-mielants), who had worked with Murphy on *Peaky Blinders*, and adapted by the Irish playwright Enda Walsh, whose stage play *Disco Pigs* had given Murphy an early career breakout.[5](https://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/reviews/13471/) • [10](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-10/small-things-like-these-review-cillian-murphy-claire-keegan/105146088) The project began when Murphy's wife, the visual artist Yvonne McGuinness, suggested an adaptation; Murphy found the rights available and set the film up with his producing partner Alan Moloney, naming their company Big Things Films as a nod to the title.[4](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/cillian-murphy-small-things-like-these-exclusive-awards-insider) He pitched the script to [Matt Damon](https://www.edgepedia.org/matt-damon) during night shoots on *Oppenheimer*, and Damon signed on to produce through [Artists Equity](https://www.edgepedia.org/artists-equity), the company he cofounded with Ben Affleck.[4](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/cillian-murphy-small-things-like-these-exclusive-awards-insider)\n\nCillian Murphy stars as Bill Furlong, with Emily Watson, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Clare Dunne, and Helen Behan in the cast.[8](https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-c23a52e3-d4aa-4812-a9f3-03d7ddd1dda1) The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, making it the second fine adaptation of a Keegan story to premiere there after 2022's *The Quiet Girl*, itself adapted from Keegan's novella *Foster*.[6](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/small-things-like-these-this-grimy-moving-portrait-1980s-ireland-knows-power-restraint) • [5](https://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/reviews/13471/) It was made after *Oppenheimer* but before Murphy's Oscar win for that film, and opened in North American theaters on November 8, 2024, with a digital release on December 17, 2024.[20](https://apnews.com/article/842460b018a2c7f37533e2ed088a3f56) • [7](https://www.moviefone.com/movie/small-things-like-these/qspZaaE9W0cn1OfC9zSxq2/where-to-watch/) It runs 1 hour 38 minutes and is rated PG-13.[8](https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-c23a52e3-d4aa-4812-a9f3-03d7ddd1dda1) In the United States it streams on Hulu and Disney+.[21](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/small-things-like-these)\n\nMurphy described the story as \"seemingly simple, but it's actually incredibly complex the way it talks about society and complicity and shame and guilt and secrecy and fear,\" and noted that although the protagonist is a man, \"it's a story about women.\"[20](https://apnews.com/article/842460b018a2c7f37533e2ed088a3f56) He told interviewers he tried not to play Furlong as a hero but as \"a man who's in the middle of this emotional storm.\"[10](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-10/small-things-like-these-review-cillian-murphy-claire-keegan/105146088)\n\n## Reception\n\nThe film holds a 94% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes from 123 reviews, with an audience score of 81%.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these) The site's critics consensus credits Murphy's \"outstanding acting\" with anchoring the film.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these) Reviewers singled out its restraint: [Mark Kermode](https://www.edgepedia.org/mark-kermode) described it as \"a film that whispers its story to you,\" and the [British Film Institute](https://www.edgepedia.org/british-film-institute)'s *Sight and Sound* called it \"this grimy, moving portrait of 1980s Ireland\" that \"knows the power of restraint.\"[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these) • [6](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/small-things-like-these-this-grimy-moving-portrait-1980s-ireland-knows-power-restraint) Some critics found the low-key approach a limitation; one Metacritic review argued the film was \"so willfully downplayed that it barely scratches the surface\" of the story behind it.[22](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/small-things-like-these/)\n\nThe story has entered wider cultural treatment of the laundries, alongside works such as [Peter Mullan](https://www.edgepedia.org/peter-mullan)'s *The Magdalene Sisters* and the series *The Woman in the Wall*, as part of what one commentator called Ireland's ongoing process of reconciling and acknowledging what happened.[19](https://apnews.com/article/34a897fb4f611d9454259f293e7864e8)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Reading Guide: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, The Booker Prizes](https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/reading-guide-small-things-like-these-by-claire-keegan)\n2. [Small Things Like These, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these)\n3. [The Booker Prize 2022: Small Things Like These Reading Guide (PDF)](https://thebookerprizes.com/sites/default/files/2022-09/220927%20Reading%20Guide%20Small%20Things%20Like%20These.pdf)\n4. [Inside Cillian Murphy's First Post-'Oppenheimer' Role in 'Small Things Like These', Vanity Fair](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/cillian-murphy-small-things-like-these-exclusive-awards-insider)\n5. [Small Things Like These, Estudios Irlandeses](https://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/reviews/13471/)\n6. [Small Things like These: this grimy, moving portrait of 1980s Ireland knows the power of restraint, Sight and Sound (BFI)](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/small-things-like-these-this-grimy-moving-portrait-1980s-ireland-knows-power-restraint)\n7. [Small Things Like These: Where to Watch, Rent, or Buy, Moviefone](https://www.moviefone.com/movie/small-things-like-these/qspZaaE9W0cn1OfC9zSxq2/where-to-watch/)\n8. [Small Things Like These, Disney+](https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-c23a52e3-d4aa-4812-a9f3-03d7ddd1dda1)\n9. [Book Review: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, The Connexion (December 2023)](https://dq5pwpg1q8ru0.cloudfront.net/2023/12/04/13/35/27/35ef3192-e34e-4f78-855c-5f9305dfe2de/Connexion%2049-December%202023.pdf)\n10. [Cillian Murphy brings his undeniable star power to adaptation of award-winning Irish novel Small Things Like These, ABC News](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-10/small-things-like-these-review-cillian-murphy-claire-keegan/105146088)\n11. [Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These (2021): thesis, Universidad de Valladolid](https://uvadoc.uva.es/bitstream/handle/10324/79783/TFM_F_2025_129.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1)\n12. [All Book Marks reviews for Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan](https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/small-things-like-these/)\n13. ['The Whole Thing was Numbingly Bland and it was Deliberately So': Food and Power in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, 1922–1996, Gender & History](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-0424.12667)\n14. [Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment, JSTOR](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvpj76pf)\n15. [Historical Spaces of Confinement 2: Magdalene Laundries, in Imaginative Criminology, Cambridge University Press](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/imaginative-criminology/historical-spaces-of-confinement-2-magdalene-laundries/FB32866FD65A81A9EA53ED6524187EC5)\n16. ['I'm still there': Institutional memory and spatial legacies at the former Waterford Magdalene Laundry, SAGE Journals](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26326663261457541)\n17. [Modern slavery: 4.4 Magdalene laundries, OpenLearn, The Open University](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society-politics-law/modern-slavery/content-section-4.4)\n18. [Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries, Department of Justice, Ireland](https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-justice-home-affairs-and-migration/collections/report-of-the-inter-departmental-committee-to-establish-the-facts-of-state-involvement-with-the-magdalen-laundries/)\n19. [Ruth Wilson stirs up trauma of Magdalene laundries in 'The Woman in the Wall', Associated Press](https://apnews.com/article/34a897fb4f611d9454259f293e7864e8)\n20. [Q&A: Cillian Murphy on following 'Oppenheimer' with the Irish drama 'Small Things Like These', Associated Press](https://apnews.com/article/842460b018a2c7f37533e2ed088a3f56)\n21. [Small Things Like These streaming: watch online, JustWatch](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/small-things-like-these)\n22. [Small Things Like These Reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/small-things-like-these/)\n23. [startribune.com](https://www.startribune.com/review-small-things-like-these-by-claire-keegan/600120911)\n24. [https://theconversation.com/small-things-like-these-shows-the-transformative-power-of-individual-action-but-conflates-the-history-242818](https://theconversation.com/small-things-like-these-shows-the-transformative-power-of-individual-action-but-conflates-the-history-242818)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2023 and 2024 › Titles O to Y*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/small-things-like-these", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/small-things-like-these.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Small Things Like These\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/small-things-like-these. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Small Things Like These](https://www.edgepedia.org/small-things-like-these)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/small-things-like-these](https://www.edgepedia.org/small-things-like-these). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Small Things Like These\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/small-things-like-these. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Small Things Like These: Claire Keegan's 2021 Booker-nominated novella and Tim Mielants' 2024 film starring Cillian Murphy as coal merchant Bill Furlong, set in 1985 New Ross, Ireland, confronting Magdalene laundry abuses." }