Testimony

Ireland, UK 2025

In 2013, then Taoiseach Enda Kenny made an apology for the state’s role in the outrage of the Magdalene Laundries. He declared that what had happened to the women and girls taken to them had "cast a long shadow over Irish life, over our sense of who we are". Given that the horrors of the Mother and Baby homes would emerge in the years following that statement, and that heels are still being dragged over reparations and legal reckonings for the survivors, that shadow has not gone away. The latest documentary from Aoife Kelleher (Mrs Robinson, IFFL 2024) interrogates how more than 10,000 women and girls became slave labour at these institutions run by the Catholic Church between 1922 and 1996, how unmarried mothers, children born out of wedlock, victims and survivors of abuse, those regarded as promiscuous or unruly and some who were poverty-stricken were incarcerated, shunned by Irish society, and endured dreadful treatment. Yet Testimony also highlights the inspiring resistance and the heroic pursuit of justice that many survivors and their supporters have taken on. This is a rare and important film, one that trawls the lingering wreckage of appalling events in search of hope and renewal. - Michael Hayden

DIRECTOR 
Aoife Kelleher