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Chicago – It’s New Year’s Eve, so what better day for a look-back to the 10 Best Films of 2024, a soul search exercise in experiences. How do you break down a hundred and a half films in a year to a 10 in the end? Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com, Wbgr-fm and Wssr-fm gives it his best shot.

If there was one trend that defined 2024, in my observation, was the perhaps beginning of the end of the superhero genre? The only huge hit was Deadpool & Wolverine ($640M), with Venom: The Last Dance in second ($132M) barely reaching its budget in domestic box office. Madame Web, Kraven The Hunter and Joker: Folie Á Deux were box office duds.

I format my 10 Best to reflect the on-air reviews I do weekly on Wbgr-fm and Wssr-fm and occasional appearances on Missourinet.com. Each of the 10 Best will be in the on-air or audio format for your listening pleasure.

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

I’ll be blunt: it wasn’t a good year for films, or at least for me it wasn’t. The following ten films and five honorable mentions, while fine to very good, represent a step down from what 2023 offered. Part of this is due to an industry impacted by two strikes in 2023 that cancelled or postponed many productions. Part of it is personal, in that I couldn’t see as many films as I’d like in 2024. And part of it has to do with the large amount of mediocrity I did see, of films that lacked risk and imagination. A lot of movies preferred to ape their influences rather than build off of them, and in turn coddled viewers with familiarity. By the end of...

Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind awards season’s most talked-about movies continues with Small Things Like These, Cillian Murphy’s first film after winning the Oscar for his starring role in Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture-winning Oppenheimer.

Enda Walsh, the Tony Award-winning Irish playwright and director, adapted the script for the film from Claire Keegan’s 2021 Booker Prize-nominated novel, which was selected as a final Oprah’s Book Club Pick in 2024. The book itself might seem short at 128 pages, but the story is rich within the context of the silent complicity of Ireland in the 1980s.

The film, directed by Tim Mielants, opened in the U.S. on November 8 after it world premiered earlier in the year as the opening-night film at the Berlin Film Festival. Emily Watson, who plays a formidable nun, won the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Actress at the festival. Eileen Walsh,...

Currently starring in Dune: Prophecy as the Mother Superior of the mysterious sisterhood that becomes the Bene Gesserit, Emily Watson earlier this year scooped the Silver Bear Best Supporting Performance award at the Berlin Film Festival for her role as a different sort of formidable Mother Superior in Irish drama Small Things Like These.

The Cillian Murphy-starrer is directed by Tim Mielants and based on Claire Keegan’s acclaimed eponymous novel which has been adapted by Enda Walsh. Watson plays Sister Mary, whose convent is concealing a Magdalene Laundry, businesses run jointly by the Church and the Irish state where unwed mothers were consigned to repent of their sins, do hard labor and ultimately deliver their babies for adoption.

Although Watson doesn’t have much screen time, her impact is spine-chilling. In her review for Deadline, Stephanie Bunbury wrote that Watson “brings an urgent sense of high stakes… she seems to vibrate with menace.

Cillian Murphy, an Academy Award-winning actor, brings a powerful story of moral awakening to the screen in “Small Things Like These,” a historical drama confronting one of Ireland’s most traumatic institutional legacies. Based on Claire Keegan’s 2021 novel, the film goes into the contentious Magdalene laundries of 1985, presenting a nuanced analysis of individual conscience during a challenging moment in Irish history.

Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a coal dealer in New Ross, Ireland, who becomes increasingly aware of the dark truths about a local convent-run institution. Subtle, repressed emotion characterizes the actor’s performance, which he regards as purposeful. “A lot of acting is about withholding,” Murphy says. “It’s about leaving space for the audience to interpret emotions nonverbally.”

The film is particularly relevant to Ireland’s complex socioeconomic history. Catholic orders ran the Magdalene laundries, which sheltered “fallen” women until 1996. Murphy, who was around 9 years old when the film was set,...

Perhaps it’s appropriate that a story about a coal man should be an extremely slow burn, but there isn’t much warmth for the beleaguered protagonist of this wintry drama. Typically, Cillian Murphy has used his newfound Oscar-winner clout to go back to Ireland and work again with his Disco Pigs collaborator Enda Walsh on an adaptation of a sparely worded novel by Claire Keegan. The result is remarkably powerful, even if it’s understated to the point of wordlessness.

Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a father of five daughters with a kindly heart but taciturn demeanour. He has secrets in his past that make him, perhaps, unusually sympathetic to the girls brought into the local convent because they are “in trouble”, as it was euphemistically called, but every personal and social pressure counsels him against speaking out, lest the powerful church turn against his business, his family and himself.

Cannes Palm d’Or winner Anora went wide and A Real Pain added theaters in limited release, both nicely, with Crunchyroll’s Japanese epic fantasy Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom and Small Things Like These at the specialty box office.

Sean Baker’s breakout Anora is looking at $2.55 million on 1,104 screens in week four of Neon’s slow rollout for a tidy cume of $7.2 million.

A Real Pain from Searchlight Pictures with Jesse Eisenberg (who also directed and wrote) and Kieran Culkin will gross an estimated $282k at an additional eight locations for 12 theaters in week 2. That’s a cume through Sunday of $600k heading into a major expansion on 900+ screens next week.

Overlord by Naoyuki Ito is projecting $1.165 million on under 650 screens for the latest in the anime series based on the manga by Kugane Maruyama, produced by Kadokawa and animated by Madhouse. The first season debuted in 2017. Currently, all...

After his Oscar-winning, pitch-perfect role in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, people have been eagerly awaiting Cillian Murphy’s next role. Instead of taking on something big to follow up the near $1 billion grossing, Best Picture winner, Murphy has instead chosen to go smaller – much, much smaller in Small Things Like These. This film tells an appropriately small, intimate story that works mostly as a showcase for Murphy’s acting ability, which is just as sharp as before.

Small Things Like These Review

Small Things is a co-production of Artists Equity, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company, and Big Things FIlms, Cillian Murphy’s brand new company. Serving as the first project of which Murphy has produced, this film has a particularly special feeling to it.

An adaptation of Claire Keegan’s 2021 novel, this follows Bill Furlong (Murphy), a coal merchant living in a small Irish town in the mid-80s.

Box office darling Anora, Sean Baker’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner from Neon, goes wide Friday after a slow platform, expanding to 1,104 screens as indies continue to bust onto screens. Searchlight Pictures’ A Real Pain adds eight locations, with Focus Features’ Conclave and A24’s Heretic continuing, and launching, respectively, in wide release.

A Real Pain starring Kieren Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed, adds theaters in Los Angeles, New York and Toronto after a strong opening last weekend, when it took the third-highest per-theater average of the year. It goes to 900+ theaters across all major markets next week.

Opening in moderate release: Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate’s launch of Artist Equity’s Small Things Like These starring Cillian Murphy at 795 theaters.

Directed by Tim Mielants and written by Enda Walsh, the film is based on the bestselling book of same name by Claire Keegan. It...

Borat star Maria Bakalova will board a bus with Peter Mullan for the single-location thriller, No Way Off.

Veteran Scottish actor Peter Mullan is set to lead single location thriller No Way Off for Altitude, starring opposite Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm’s standout performer, Maria Bakalova.

Downton Abbey director Brian Kelly will make the film, based on a screenplay by Gaby Hill, who recently wrote crime thriller series We Hunt Together. Matthew James Wilkinson will produce for his Stigma Films banner.

The premise sounds, quite frankly, amazing: a single mother and her baby son find themselves trapped on a moving bus drvien by a mask-wearing maniac. Also, it’s set at Christmas.

The synopsis reads as follows:

Inspired by single-location thrillers such as The Shallows, Buried and Crawl, No Way Off is set on Christmas Eve and revolves around Laura, a young mother who waits at a bus stop with her infant son.

All the Small Things: Mielants Mines the Evils of Complicity

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The oft cited quote from Edmund Burke is the ultimate essence of Small Things Like These, the latest from Belgian director Tim Mielants. Adapted from the 2021 novella by Claire Keegan (who also wrote The Quiet Girl), it’s a subtle exploration of the infamous Magdalene Laundries, torturous institutions run by the Roman Catholic Church intended to house ‘fallen women.’ While many films have explored the dreadful details of this culturally sanctioned terror, Mielants expounds upon Keegan’s prose to highlight the communal complicity which allowed this institutionalization to prosper.…...

Following his Oscar win for Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy returns to cinemas in this powerful new drama. Today we’re fortunate to present these cast interviews for Small Things Like These. Directed by Tim Mielants, the cast includes Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Clare Dunne, Helen Behan, Emily Watson.

Hayley Donaghy asks the questions.

The film hits UK and Irish cinemas on November 1st.

Plot:

Cillian Murphy delivers a stunning performance as devoted father Bill Furlong in this film based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Claire Keegan. While working as a coal merchant to support his family, he discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent — and uncovers truths of his own — forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church.

The post Small Things Like These Interviews: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh & more on their...

Thanksgiving may promise a bounty on the dinner table, but the multiplex still looks bare. Continuing this year's theme, our November film preview features another relatively light month at the movies. Still, it’s quality over quantity, and if you ignore Red One, the $250 million attempt at turning Christmas lore into a Marvel movie,...

Exclusive: Barbara Broccoli, with her theater hat on, is transferring the Sing Street musical to London. The play is based on John Carney’s charming 2016 coming-of-age movie about a group of skint schoolkids in 1982 Dublin who form a rock band to help them find love and forget their troubles.

The show, from the team behind Once, is another musical adapted from a film created by Carney.

Once, with James Bond producer Broccoli as lead producer, went on to win eight trophies at the 66th Tony Awards, including Best Musical and a Best Book win for playwright-screenwriter Enda Walsh, who performs the same writing duties on Sing Street.

Walsh confirmed that the Sing Street musical will preview at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, West London beginning July 8 for a limited run until August 23.

The show is billed as A Lyric Hammersmith Theatre Theatre Production but it’s being led by Broccoli, as...

Lionsgate has released the official trailer for Small Things Like These starring Oscar winner Cillian Murphy and two-time Oscar nominee Emily Watson. The film is based on Claire Keegan’s critically acclaimed book, which she dedicated to those who suffered time in Ireland’s mother and baby homes and Magdalen laundries. Currently, the drama sits at 83% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes following festival screenings.

“While working as a coal merchant to support his family, he discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent — and uncovers truths of his own — forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church,” reads Lionsgate’s synopsis.

Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Clare Dunne, and Helen Behan also star. Enda Walsh adapted Keegan’s book and Tim Mielants (Wil) directed. Murphy, Alan Moloney, Catherine Magee, Matt Damon, and Drew Vinton serve as producers. Executive producers include Ben Affleck,...

Lionsgate has announced details for the US release of the new film “Small Things Like These.” The drama, set in 1980s Ireland, tells the story of a coal merchant who uncovers secrets kept by the local convent. It is based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Irish author Claire Keegan.

The movie will open in US theaters on November 8. It will first debut in the UK and Ireland on November 1. Lionsgate acquired distribution rights for North America, the UK, and Ireland after “Small Things Like These” premiered to critical acclaim at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.

Starring Oscar winner Cillian Murphy, the film follows Bill Furlong, a devoted father, as Christmas nears in 1985 Ireland. Furlong discovers disturbing truths kept by the convent in his small town. He is then forced to face the silence of his community about these secrets, as well as confronting parts of his own past.

Cillian Murphy skyrocketed to fame due to his role as Tommy Shelby in the BBC period drama show, Peaky Blinders. After the TV series he participated in several projects, but it was the 2023 movie that cemented his name in Hollywood.

Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s genius helped establish the actor’s name in the industry and worldwide. Murphy won the Academy Award for Best Actor for this critically acclaimed film. After a year since his Oscar-winning film’s release, the actor is back onscreen with another project. The first appearance of his new movie, Small Things Like These just got released, launching a wave of excitement among fans.

A new look and a new story: Oscar winner’s newest venture Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer | Credit: Universal Pictures.

Cillian Murphy won his first-ever Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Oppenheimer. The Christopher Nolan directorial movie along with his BBC hit show,...

Peter Sarsgaard, the veteran character actor who has received some of the best notices of his career this year for his performance on the Apple TV+ drama series Presumed Innocent and in the Paramount film September 5, will receive the Newport Beach Film Festival’s Film Performance of the Year Award and record an episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast live in front of a festival audience, Nbff announced on Tuesday.

Sarsgaard’s award presentation and podcast recording will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 23, during the 25th edition of Nbff, which will run Oct. 17-24.

The fest also announced its film lineup, which includes 112 films from 19 countries, including 16 world premieres, 10 U.S. premieres, 16 North American premieres, 13 West Coast premieres and 10 Southern California Premieres

This year’s Nbff will open on Oct. 17 with the world premiere of Simon West’s Old Guy, with West and star Chrostoph Waltz in attendance,...

Lionsgate has dropped the official trailer and set UK, Ireland and U.S. release dates for Small Things Like These, starring Oscar winner Cillian Murphy. Check out the trailer above and a new poster below.

Small Things Like These opened the Berlin Film Festival in February, the first time an Irish movie has had the honor. Emily Watson went on to win the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance for her role. Lionsgate later acquired North America, the UK and Ireland. It will release the film first in the UK and Ireland on November 1, followed by the U.S. on November 8; the latter with Roadside Attractions.

Murphy, who also produces, stars as devoted father Bill Furlong in the drama that’s based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Claire Keegan. While working as a coal merchant to support his family, Bill discovers disturbing secrets kept by the...

Here’s a sneak peek at Cillian Murphy’s next not-“Peaky Blinders” film.

The Academy Award winner stars in and produces “Small Things Like These” based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Claire Keegan. “Small Things Like These” centers on devoted father Bill Furlong (Murphy) who works as a coal merchant to support his family. While on the job, he discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent — and realizes some truths of his own — forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church.

The film is set in 1985, and co-stars Emily Watson, Michelle Fairley, and Eileen Walsh.

Playwright Enda Walsh adapated the script, with “Peaky Blinders” director Tim Mielants directing. The feature premiered at Berlinale 2024; it was later acquired by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions.

Murphy’s “Oppenheimer” co-star Matt Damon also produces through his...

Oscar winner Cillian Murphy plays a coal merchant and father haunted by secret abuses in a local convent sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the trailer for Small Things Like These from Lionsgate ahead of a Nov. 8 theatrical release.

Delivering coal to the convent, Bill Furlong (Murphy) witnesses a mother forcing her young daughter inside and against her will. “Mommy, please! Stop it! No please! I’m not going in there,” she screams as a silent Furlong looks on in the short teaser.

Set in 1985 just ahead of Christmas, Furlong, as he makes further deliveries to the convent, is forced to confront his own unspoken grief and childhood trauma, which leads him into making a moral choice. “You want to watch what you say, about what’s there,” Furlong is warned in the trailer as he sees first-hand the atrocities taking place in the local convent.

Small Things Like These...

Lionsgate UK has unleashed a new trailer for the Cillian Murphy-led ‘Small Things Like These.’

Oscar® winner Cillian Murphy delivers a stunning performance as devoted father Bill Furlong in this film based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Claire Keegan. While working as a coal merchant to support his family, he discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent — and uncovers truths of his own — forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church.

Directed by Tim Mielants, the cast includes Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Clare Dunne, Helen Behan, Emily Watson.

Also in trailers – “It’s not safe…” Trailer drops for ‘Salem’s Lot’

The film hits UK and Irish cinemas on November 1st.

The post Cillian Murphy stars in trailer for ‘Small Things Like These’ appeared first on HeyUGuys.

Connext, the annual showcase of upcoming film and TV projects and rising talent from Flanders, will not take place in 2024, Flanders Image has confirmed.

It is understood the plan is for Connext to return in 2025, possibly with a new name, widened scope and different location. The event has previously taken place in Ghent and Antwerp but could head to Ostend or Brussels. There will also likely be an online component.

Connext was the platform for local film and TV producers to pitch projects, present works in progress and show completed films to international sales agents, distributors, festival directors and financiers.

Exclusive: Oscar winner Cillian Murphy’s latest project, Steve, is wrapping production this week in the UK. Murphy stars in the reimagining of Max Porter’s novel Shy, and also produces under his Big Things Films banner with partner Alan Moloney. Netflix greenlighted the film in collaboration with Big Things back in February and will distribute globally. Scroll down for a first-look photo from the set.

Previously unannounced main cast includes Jay Lycurgo, whose credits include Half Bad: The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself, Titans and I May Destroy You.

Set in the mid-90s, Steve is a reimagining of Porter’s Sunday Times bestseller Shy. The film follows a pivotal day in the life of headteacher Steve (Murphy) and his students at a last-chance reform college amidst a world that has forsaken them. As Steve fights to protect the college’s integrity and impending closure, we witness him grappling with his own mental health.

Lionsgate is snapping up the North American distribution rights for Cillian Murphy’s latest feature, Small Things Like These. Based on the acclaimed novel by Claire Keegan, the historical drama explores a dark secret kept in a convent and the father who uncovers the harsh truth. Murphy produces Small Things Like These in addition to his starring role with Emily Watson co-starring.

Tim Mielants directs Small Things Like These from a script by Enda Walsh. The following description arrives courtesy of Lionsgate’s official press release:

Small Things Like These, which was the opening night film playing in competition at the Berlin Film Festival this year and won a Silver Bear for Emily Watson’s performance, takes place over Christmas in 1985, when devoted father Bill Furlong (Murphy) discovers the startling secrets being kept by the convent in his town, and some shocking truths about his own life as well.

Murphy...

Lionsgate has acquired North American and UK rights to Berlinale opener Small Things Like These starring Oscar winner Cillian Murphy and will partner on the US and Canadian release with Roadside Attractions.

‘Small Things Like These’: Berlin Review

Tim Mielants directed the adaption of Claire Keegan’s novella which takes place in Christmas 1985 as a devoted father discovers the secrets of the town convent as well as shocking truths about his own life.

Emily Watson also stars and won the Berlin Silver Bear. Enda Walsh adapted the screenplay and is a longtime collaborator of Murphy, who won the lead...

Lionsgate has landed domestic distribution rights to “Small Things Like These,” the first film in which Cillian Murphy appears since he won his Oscar for “Oppenheimer.”

Murphy stars in and produced “Small Things Like These,” which made its world premiere at this year’s Berlin Film Festival as the opening night film in competition. The film earned strong reviews, with IndieWire saying Murphy gives another “staggering performance” and that it is “a surprisingly understated film, dour and difficult to watch in places, and firmly rooted in Irish culture and history.” It even won co-star Emily Watson the Silver Bear for her performance.

Lionsgate will partner with Roadside Attractions to release “Small Things Like These” in North America, and Lionsgate also acquired rights in the UK and Ireland. No release date has been set.

Based on Claire Keegan’s novel, “Small Things Like These” takes place over Christmas in 1985, when devoted...

Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer follow-up, the Irish drama Small Things Like These, has landed at Lionsgate for North America, the UK and Ireland.

Directed by Tim Mielants, the period drama is adapted from the novel of the same name by Irish writer Claire Keegan — who also wrote the source material for Colm Bairéad’s Oscar-nominated drama The Quiet Girl — and plays out in a small Irish town in 1985 in the weeks before Christmas.

Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man who becomes aware of abuse happening at the local convent, abuse that forces him to confront the trauma of his own childhood and make a moral choice. The backdrop is the real history of the Magdalene Laundries, asylums and workhouses run by the Catholic Church in Ireland purportedly for the purpose of employing and educating “fallen women.”

Lionsgate will partner with Roadside Attractions to release the film theatrically in the U.

“Small Things Like These,” the Irish drama starring newly-minted Oscar winner Cillian Murphy that opened the Berlinale earlier this year, finally has a domestic home, Variety has learned, with Lionsgate picking up the film for the U.S., the U.K. and Ireland.

The studio will partner with Roadside Attractions for its North American theatrical release.

Based on the Booker Prize-nominated book by Claire Keegan and directed by Tim Mielants, “Small Things Like These,” premiered to solid reviews in Berlin. The film sees Murphy star as Bill, a soft-spoken coal delivery driver and devoted father in 1980s Ireland who uncovers disturbing activity at the local convent — led by Emily Watson’s terrifying nun Sister Mary — that challenges his own internal traumas. Watson won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for her performance.

Produced and financed by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity, “Small Things Like These” also marks the...

This post contains spoilers for "Peaky Blinders."

The world of "Peaky Blinders" is often unsurprisingly violent and shockingly visceral, and the characters who inhabit it tend to be haunted by their own demons. Among the Shelbys, Arthur (Paul Anderson) is the most volatile, oscillating between rabid outbursts and complex vulnerability — the very complexity that draws us to the character. Over the course of the show, Arthur reaches many emotional extremes, his inner conflicts externalized in the most brutal ways, as opposed to Thomas (Cillian Murphy), who tends to direct his doubts and scrutiny inward. Anderson brings these excesses to life with incredible flair, and there's also a certain sense of restraint in how Arthur conveys unspoken emotions, at least when he is not indulging in ultraviolence to feel a little less empty on the inside.

One such instance of the character expressing subtle moral conflict is during season 3, episode 5, when Thomas,...

Oppenheimer ft Cillian Murphy ( Photo Credit – IMDb )

When Oppenheimer was released in 2023, critics and moviegoers couldn’t stop praising it. Directed by Christopher Nolan, the biographical war drama stars Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, and many others. Cillian Murphy played Robert J. Oppenheimer in Nolan’s film and received immense appreciation for his performance.

What made Oppenheimer such a big hit is the powerful story, the direction, cinematography, music, and the performances. From Cillian Murphy to Robert Downey Jr. to Emily Blunt, every actor associated with the movie was praised for their acting. Cillian and Rdj also went on to win several big awards this year, including Oscars. Well, the streak of winning awards is not yet over for the Batman Begins actors.

Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer

Recently, Cillian Murphy was presented with the Best Lead Actor award for Oppenheimer, at the 21st Irish Film and TV Academy Awards.

Exclusive: Two nights before Cillian Murphy won the Best Actor Oscar for the Universal Pictures blockbuster Oppenheimer, the studio completed a pre-emptive acquisition for the Mark A. Bradley book Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America. It’s an epic story of a corrupt union leader who murders a rival and is taken down by the lawyer son of the slain coal miner. It will be scripted as a starring and producing vehicle for Murphy.

Jez Butterworth will write the script with John-Henry Butterworth. That duo worked together on Edge of Tomorrow. There is a lot here for them to mine.

Blood Runs Coal takes place in the late 1960s in the coal mines of Pennsylvania and chronicles one of the most infamous crimes in the history of organized labor.

So, the Oscars have been and gone and there were few surprises in the acting categories. Cillian Murphy won Best Actor for “Oppenheimer” while Best Actress went to Emma Stone (“Poor Things”). Best Supporting Actor was taken home by Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”) and Da’Vine Joy Randolph claimed Best Supporting Actress for “The Holdovers.” But let’s not spend too much time looking back. Let’s look forward. With that in mind, what have these four acting winners got coming up next?

Murphy won his first Oscar for portraying J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan‘s biopic. His next project is “Small Things Like These,” which just premiered to great acclaim at Berlinale. Directed by BAFTA nominee Tim Mielants, the film follows Murphy as a father in 1985 who uncovers the shocking secrets of the local convent.

Stone, who just picked up her second Best Actress Oscar (she has one for...

The 74th Berlin International Film Festival announced the winners of the fest at the awards ceremony held at the Berlinale Palast on February 24.

20 films competed for the awards in this year’s competition with Lupita Nyong’o heading the International Jury alongside Ann Hui, Christian Petzold, Albert Serra, Jasmine Trinca and Oksana Zabuzhko. The Encounters Jury, Lisandro Alonso, Denis Côté and Tizza Covi choose the winners for Best Film, Best Director and the Special Jury Award.

The Golden Bear for Best Film was awarded to Dahomey by Mati Diop. Emily Watson won The Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance for her role in Small Things Like These, while Sebastian Stan received The Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance in A Different Man. Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias was honored with The Silver Bear for Best Director for his film Pepe, and the Silver Bear Jury Prize went to Bruno Dumont for Empire.

One thing that rankles about some historical dramas is their tendency to indicate the story’s epoch using the broadest possible signifiers. Movies about the 1980s in particular often draw as much from the spirit of ’80s-themed house parties as they do from history. In contrast, Tim Mielant’s Small Things Like These fashions a believable and at times engrossing vision of the mid-’80s, even if its story could’ve benefited from similar nuance.

Adapted from the novel of the same name by Claire Keegan, the film takes place during the 1985 Christmas season in New Ross, Ireland. In this working-class town, not everything is “from” the ‘80s: People wear clothes that look like they’re from the ’60s, the kids watch ’70s cartoons like Danger Mouse, and some of the vehicles even seem as they’re from the ’40s. Small Things Like These understands how the vestiges of the...

Murphy plays a man who witnesses Ireland’s church’s abusive workhouses for unwed mothers in an absorbing Dickensian story based on recent history

As producer and lead actor, Cillian Murphy has brought to the screen a piercingly painful and sad story with a very literary intensity, juxtaposing the detail of the present with flashback memories of the past. It is about Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries: the church’s homes for unwed mothers who were made to work in an atmosphere of wretchedness and shame and had their babies taken away and sold to foster parents. Enda Walsh has adapted the much admired novel by Claire Keegan and the director is Tim Mielants.

This subdued but absorbing and eventful film is rather different from Peter Mullan’s extravagant The Magdalene Sisters – which also featured Eileen Walsh in its cast – and different also from Stephen Frears’ bittersweet dramedy Philomena. Murphy...

Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon are stepping out for the premiere of their new movie!

The two actors hit the red carpet together at the premiere of Small Things Like These held on Thursday (February 15) during the 2024 Berlinale International Film Festival at the Berlinale Palast in Berlin, Germany.

Fellow cast members in attendance included Eileen Walsh, Emily Watson, and Zara Devlin along with director Tim Mielants.

Keep reading to find out more…Cillian and Matt serve as producers on the new movie, which Cillian also stars in.

Here’s the movie’s synopsis: “It is 1985 in the run-up to Christmas in a small town in County Wexford, Ireland. Bill Furlong toils as a coal merchant to support himself, his wife and his five daughters. Early one morning while out delivering coal at the local convent, he makes a discovery that forces him to confront his past and the complicit silence...

After a week of protests, petitions, and even a call to boycott the Berlin International Film Festival, organizers had to be fearing the worst when the 74th Berlinale kicked off Thursday night.

But the only demonstration on the red carpet was a peaceful one. Several filmmakers gathered together next to Berlinale Directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian and, holding up their cell phones, with LEDs shining, called for “democracy, diversity and peaceful togetherness.”

It was worlds away from the PR disaster that could have been expected just a week ago when the news came out that the Berlinale had invited elected members of the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to its opening ceremony. The invitations were standard protocol and AfD members had been invited to the festival for years. But this year was different. For weeks, hundreds of thousands of Germans have been marching in anti-AfD demonstrations across the country,...

The Berlin Film Festival officially kicked off Thursday evening with an eventful opening ceremony at the Berlinale Palast theater in the German capital.

After a divisive build-up to the fest, the opening ceremony was, in contrast, a relatively conventional affair. High-profile attendees included veteran German filmmakers Wim Wenders and Fatih Akin, Phantom Thread actress Vicky Krieps, and international jury president Lupita Nyong’o alongside her fellow jury members Brady Corbet, Ann Hui, Christian Petzold, Albert Serra, Jasmine Trinca and Oksana Zabuzhko.

The evening’s opening film was Small Things Like These, starring Cillian Murphy, who was in attendance with producer Matt Damon and co-star Emily Watson. Directed by Tim Mielants (Peaky Blinders), Small Things Like These is the first Irish film to open the Berlinale.

Related: ‘Small Things Like These’ Review: Cillian Murphy Plays A Father In Torment In ’80s-Set Irish Trauma Tale

Before the pic opened, the crowd inside the...

Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2024 Berlin Film Festival. Lionsate opens “Small Things Like These” in theaters on Friday, November 8.

Opening nights at major festivals often lean towards the showier end of the spectrum, reaching for films with starry, red carpet-friendly casts and headline-grabbing premises to kick off proceedings in flashy style. The past two Berlinales boasted fun but forgettable openers — Rebecca Miller’s “She Came To Me” and Francois Ozon’s “Peter von Kant” — which is why it’s a pleasant surprise that this year’s Berlinale Opening Night offers something altogether subtler, a genuinely profound low-key gem which will be remembered long after the champagne and sequins have been swept away.

On the surface, “Small Things Like These,” produced by and starring the freshly Oscar-nominated Cillian Murphy (and with “Oppenheimer” co-star Matt Damon also on board as producer) fits the Opening Night brief well. In reality,...

Unlike Peter Mullan’s searing 2008 Venice Golden Lion winner, The Magdalene Sisters, or Joni Mitchell’s piercingly sad ballad, “The Magdalene Laundries,” the name given to the notorious workhouse institutions controlled by Irish religious orders is never spoken in Small Things Like These. But its Biblical evocation of the “fallen woman” is clear as a bell in this acutely affecting drama about how a glimpse of cruelty behind convent walls reopens the psychological wounds of a kind family man who has strived to build a life untainted by the stigma and sorrow of his childhood.

That man is Bill Furlong, a hard-working coal merchant and loving father of five daughters, played by Cillian Murphy in a performance that rips your heart out despite being an unimpeachable model of restraint.

The actor’s work here could scarcely be more of a contrast to his fine-grained characterization as the soft-spoken but imposing title figure in Oppenheimer,...

Right from the start, there is no doubt where we are. Narrow, gray streets in the dim daylight of winter, peat hills between cramped villages, a crow sitting on a church spire: this is western Ireland in the ’80s, when the Celtic Tiger was yet to roar and jobs were scarce, divorce was illegal, condoms available only on prescription and central heating unknown.

It is also the Ireland of the Magdalene laundries, businesses run jointly by Church and the Irish state where unwed mothers were consigned to repent of their sins, do hard labor for a living and ultimately deliver their babies for adoption. Academic research estimates that 35,000 women were forced into this service. Around 1,600 women and 6,000 babies are believed to have died behind the convents’ walls. Nobody — apparently — asked why. The last of these institutions closed only in 1996.

In the Berlin Film festival opener Small Things Like These, adapted...

Cillian Murphy, the Irish star of the Berlinale opening night film Small Things Like These, spoke of Ireland’s “collective trauma” and the ability of art to “be a really useful band for that wound” at a press conference ahead of the film’s world premiere later tonight (February 15).

Murphy headlines the first Irish independent feature to open the Berlinale. Set over Christmas 1985, Murphy plays devoted father and coal merchant Bill Furlong, who discovers shocking secrets kept by the convent in his town.

The film is set against the backdrop of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, asylums run by Roman Catholic...

Cillian Murphy, the Irish star of the Berlinale opening night film Small Things Like These, spoke of Ireland’s “collective trauma” and the ability of art to “be a really useful band for that wound” at a press conference ahead of the film’s world premiere later tonight (February 15).

Murphy headlines the first Irish independent feature to open the Berlinale. Set over Christmas 1985, Murphy plays devoted father and coal merchant Bill Furlong, who discovers shocking secrets kept by the convent in his town.

The film is set against the backdrop of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, asylums run by Roman Catholic...

Matt Damon first heard about Small Things Like These, the latest effort from his and Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity, while filming Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, working opposite Cillian Murphy.

“I was out in the New Mexican desert with Cillian. I was sitting across from him watching what he was doing in Oppenheimer,” remembers Damon during a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival, where the film is acting as the fest opener. “I had already called Ben and told him what I was witnessing and how incredible it was. A couple days later Cillian told me, ‘I have my next movie I really want to do.’ And I said, ‘We are starting a studio. Can we be a part of it’?”

Murphy, who also produces, leads the period drama, which is adapted from the novel of the same name by Irish writer Claire Keegan, set out in a small...

During the Berlin Film Festival press conference for his newest movie “Small Things Like These,” Cillian Murphy reflected on the “collective trauma” of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries.

Based on the book of the same name by Claire Keegan, “Small Things Like These” focuses on the “horrific asylums run by Roman Catholic institutions from the 1820s until 1996, ostensibly to reform ‘fallen young women,’” according to its synopsis. The story is told through the eyes of Murphy’s devoted father and coal merchant Bill Furlong, who during Christmas 1985 discovers some “startling secrets” kept by his local convent.

“It was a collective trauma, particularly for people of a certain age, and I think that we’re still processing that,” Murphy said of the dark moment in Irish history. “I also think that art can be a really useful balm for that wound. The book certainly was a huge seller in Ireland, it seems like everybody read it.

Exclusive: Passing the time between Oppenheimer takes in a New Mexico bunker one morning at about 4 a.m., Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon sowed the seeds of a future collaboration. Fast-forward to today, and Small Things Like These is opening the Berlin Film Festival.

Murphy stars in and produced Small Things Like These alongside his Big Things Films partner Alan Moloney. Damon is also a producer — his and Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity financed the film that’s based on Claire Keegan’s acclaimed novel and was adapted for the screen by Enda Walsh. Tim Mielants directs.

Though it deals with a serious subject matter, the road to making the movie was “blissful,” and married “kismet” with “serendipity,” Damon and Murphy told me recently in a conversation that also touched on how Artists Equity acts as “facilitator” and not “babysitter”, the...

Hot button topics like the Berlinale disinviting AfD politicians, the Israel-Gaza war and Vladimir Putin were on the agenda as the 2024 Berlin Film Festival got underway.

Jury president Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave, Black Panther) said she hoped political debate among Berlin international jury would center around film and the 20 competition titles to be viewed over the next 11 days. “When we were debating this as a jury, Oksana (Zabuzhko) said everything is political. And I think that’s true, in art. What we’re here to do is to see how artists are responding to the world we’re living in right now,” Nyong’o answered when asked how it felt to be a festival jury president in “these crazy times.”

Other jury members were more willing to directly address hot potatoes tossed in their direction during a heated press conference on Thursday. That included repeated queries about the Berlinale sparking controversy by first inviting,...

Jury members for the 74th Berlinale answered and avoided numerous political questions in a tense press conference ahead of the opening of the 2024 festival.

In a 40-minute conference, the seven-person jury fielded questions on the invitation then disinvitation of Germany right-wing party Alternative fur Deutschland; the ongoing crisis in Gaza; and the war in Ukraine.

Responding to a question about Gaza, German filmmaker Christian Petzold said, “I don’t want to answer this question here because it’s not really one that belongs in this press conference.

“I’m in favour of peace, in favour of discussing, talking, which I...

With the 2023-24 awards season galloping towards the finish line, the whirlwind of ceremonies, red carpets, dinners and other glitzy occasions for feted stars of the moment to be feted some more is keeping most of the nominees exceptionally busy. Among the busiest must be Cillian Murphy, tipped to add both Oscar and BAFTA wins to the Golden Globe he’s already won for his lead turn in “Oppenheimer.”

But just as his diary demands reach near farcical levels of back-to-back events, the Irish actor is making a quick detour to Germany to open the Berlinale.

Festival curtain-raiser “Small Things Like These” may be a much less explosive film than “Oppenheimer,” but it’s no less thought-provoking or powerful, based on the Booker Prize-nominated book by Claire Keegan. Murphy stars as a Bill, a soft-spoken coal delivery driver in and devoted father in 1980s Ireland who uncovers disturbing activity at...