With the present-day events of The Lost Children of Tuam beginning in 2010, the efforts of local historian Catherine Corless (Monica Dolan) help initiate a larger movement in Ireland to scrutinise the mother and baby homes run by nuns across the country as well as the Catholic Church’s overall power over women’s lives. An adaptation of a New York Times article from 2017 that caught the attention of producer Liam Neeson, Frank Berry’s film dramatises Corless’s real-life investigation into the St Mary’s shelter for unwed mothers and babies, operating in Tuam, County Galway, between 1925 and 1961, where she unveiled horrifying evidence of mistreatment and neglect. Written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, it’s a sober and patient procedural that calmly lays out the facts of the case, with Corless’s pursuit of the paper trail creating a slow-building, and emotionally impactful, sense of revelation. The film world-premiered to great responses at the Galway Film Fleadh earlier this summer and showed outside of Ireland for the first time in Toronto’s Centrepiece section; it’s released this week in Ireland through Volta Pictures.

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With the movie’s running time just topping 80 minutes, and little fuss or over-psychologising accorded to Corless’s family life and background, Berry and Lenkiewicz simply get on with telling the story in a cinematic language that may seem unremarkable and conservative, but which fleshes out the news stories on the case with gently wrought human detail. We first meet Corless at work on the small livestock farm that she runs with her loyal husband, Aidan (Andrew Bennett); beneath this, though, is an intellectually self-actualising streak, and she takes night classes in history at a local college, which require an in-depth, final piece of coursework. Inspired partially by her mother’s status as an illegitimate child, she envisages a straightforward account on St Mary’s, which she recalls from her own school days, where she shared lessons with the grown-up “home babies”.

Early interactions with residents near its old location unearth a story of human remains found beneath its grotto, which were first attributed to the Great Famine. But when Corless makes a cursory request for death certificates of children who lived at the home, she finds she can’t match them to any burial site. Eventually, she gains possession of 796 death records, with the causes ranging from infectious diseases to malnourishment, and indication grows (which is later confirmed by a test excavation) that remains of the victims were secretly dumped in a reservoir beneath the grotto as well as under the unusually large playground of a nearby housing estate.

The placid streets and fields of Tuam are enveloped in a progressively grave atmosphere, as Corless goes from local witnesses to residents of St Mary’s who survived, all the way up to the municipal authorities. Although Aidan first warns his wife about causing too much hassle, he soon becomes her most supportive ally, as local, national and then international journalists track the story’s growing circle of responsibility. Beyond its thematic connection to recent Irish films on this topic, like Small Things Like These and Philomena, the film’s sombre accumulation of clues and potential targets of blame happily recall the Oscar winner Spotlight, which also dealt with a community’s dominance by the Catholic Church. With footage towards the end of the 2018 Repeal the 8th campaign, and the revelation that 9,000 children may have died across other homes throughout the country, we feel The Lost Children of Tuam drawing together a multi-faceted response of anger towards Ireland’s historic and current centres of power.

The Lost Children of Tuam is a co-production by Ireland, the UK and the USA, staged by Element Pictures, BBC Film, Port Pictures and Fremantle. mk2 Films handles its international sales.