The Magdalene Sisters

In 1960s Ireland, three young women are sent to a Magdalene asylum run by the Catholic Church, each condemned for a supposed sexual transgression. Held as unpaid laundry workers under the harsh authority of the nuns, they suffer humiliation and cruelty while some cling to the hope of getting out.

The film makes institutional cruelty, shame and sexual repression its explicit subject, and studies the trauma such regimes leave behind in the people they confine. It offers a therapist a hard look at systemic abuse and the psychology of enforced shame. It won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2002.