It can be difficult to keep up with contemporary Irish literature, considering the bevy of acclaimed writers the country is producing (Sally Rooney, Colm Tóibín, and Paul Murray among them). Let director Tim Mielants’s new feature film, Small Things Like These, serve as a wake-up: Claire Keegan should not be lost in the crowd. Like the film, her 2021 book of the same name follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant from the quaint town of New Ross, Ireland. On the job, he begins to suspect that a local convent is in fact an abusive Magdalene asylum (a type of laundry that historically enslaved young women whom the church deemed “sexually promiscuous”). Faced with this question, Furlong must decide whether to intervene, which means challenging the religion that governs his life. Cillian Murphy stars. —Jack Sullivan