Philomena

Philomena (2013) is a British drama directed by Stephen Frears that you can watch online on iFILM. Judi Dench plays an elderly Irish woman who spent fifty years quietly carrying a secret: as a teenager she was sent to a convent after becoming pregnant outside of marriage, and the nuns arranged for her newborn son to be adopted by an American family without her real consent. Steve Coogan plays Martin Sixsmith, a disgraced political journalist who takes on her story half out of necessity, half out of detached professional curiosity.

The film draws from Sixsmith's own book about the case. Their search takes them from a county Tipperary convent to the corridors of Washington D.C., peeling back layers of institutional cover-up along the way. What makes the film quietly devastating is the gap between the two travellers: Sixsmith seethes; Philomena forgives, almost stubbornly so, and Dench turns that quality into something far more complicated than simple piety.

Dench landed an Oscar nomination for the role — one of four the film picked up across the main awards season. Stream Philomena (2013) online on iFILM.