'Art can be a really useful balm': Cillian Murphy opens up on his upcoming film 'Small Things Like These' at Berlin Film Festival

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Cillian Murphy recently attended the prestigious Berlin Film Festival for his upcoming flick 'Small Things Like These.'

The movie is based on the book of the same name by Claire Keegan. The film is about the ‘horrific asylums run by Roman Catholic institutions between the 1820s and 1996. The institutions worked to reform ‘fallen young women’, as per its storyline.

Cillian Murphy opens up on dark Irish history

At the event, Cillian talked about the ‘collective trauma’ of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, reports Variety.

“It was a collective trauma, particularly for people of a certain age, and I think that we’re still processing that,” he said.

“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. I think the sort of irony of the book is it’s a Christian man trying to do a Christian act in a dysfunctional

Christian society. And it asks a lot of questions about complicity and silence and shame and all of those things, but I really don’t think the duty of art is to answer those questions, it’s to kind of provoke them,” he added.

Matt Damon opened up on producing 'Small Things Like These'

The movie’s producer Matt Damon was also present in Berlin and was asked about his choice of film, which is a political one.

“Our feeling is — and it will remain until we go broke — that making a good movie is really the antidote to any of these things. Ultimately, it’s an exercise in trust with the people you’re working with and then trust with the audience," he said.

"This film doesn’t pander to… you know, it’s asking the audience to care about cinema, and I believe that there’s enough of an audience in the world that still does,” Damon added.

He continued, “These are the kind of movies that when I started out and really started getting work in the ’90s, you would see movies like this all the time and it was just part of our culture and our lives. I’m really grateful to be able to bring a movie like this into theaters, and we’ll see what happens. But ultimately, it’s constantly in flux and we believe that it’s not dead, so we’re going to keep trying to make great movies like this.”