A drama based on the novella by Claire Keegan. It’s 1985 and Bill’s job is to deliver coal to the local homes and businesses to support his wife and five daughters. One of his customers is the Magdalene laundries, run by a local order of nuns.
On one delivery, Bill finds a young girl locked in a coal shed. She’s distressed and seemingly abandoned. unable to help her, Bill does some research and learns the laundry is part of an institution where “fallen women” are sent for “penance and rehabilitation.” The women are held in an oppressive atmosphere and treated with cold indifference by the nuns.
Bill faces a decision: ignore the injustice or risk everything and speak out against the complicit silence of a small Irish town that’s controlled by the Catholic Church.
