Philomena

Stephen Frears' Philomena grew out of journalist Martin Sixsmith's 2009 book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, which traced a real Irishwoman's fifty-year search for the son she had been forced to give up to a Magdalene laundry in the 1950s. Steve Coogan optioned the book, co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Pope, and cast himself opposite Judi Dench. The resulting odd-couple road movie became one of the surprise hits of the 2013 awards season.

The film won Best Screenplay at Venice and the BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay, and earned four Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress for Dench, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score for Alexandre Desplat. Frears — by then thirty years into a career that had taken in My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons and The Queen — keeps the register low, almost television-modest, letting Dench and Coogan do the work.

The real Philomena Lee became a public advocate for adoption-rights reform after the film's release, founding The Philomena Project to campaign for access to records held by religious institutions in Ireland. The film is regularly cited alongside The Magdalene Sisters as one of the works that pushed the Irish state to acknowledge the abuses of mother-and-baby homes; an apology from the Taoiseach followed in 2021.