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Plot summary
Martin Sixsmith, a London journalist, no longer works as a government adviser. At a party, Jane, the daughter of Philomena Lee, suggests he write about her mother, who was made to surrender her son Anthony almost fifty years ago. Martin meets Philomena and agrees to look into the case. In 1951, pregnant after an encounter at a county fair, her father sent her to a convent, Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Ireland. For four years she worked in the convent laundry and had little contact with her son. The nuns arranged his adoption without letting her say goodbye, and she kept him a secret from her family. At the abbey, the nuns say a fire destroyed the adoption records, but they still produce the contract that barred her from contacting him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Philomena (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
The film's antagonist, Sister Hildegard McNulty, was a real nun, but she and Sixsmith never met: she died in 1995, nine years before he began investigating the abbey, and the final scene in which she chastises Philomena from her wheelchair is invented.- In real life Philomena did not travel to Washington with Sixsmith to find her son; her son's partner was keen to meet her and flew to the UK, where they met at Sixsmith's house.
- Sister Julie Rose, assistant congregational leader of the order, said the film "does not tell the whole truth and in many ways is very misleading"; a 1986 RTÉ interview shows Sister Hildegarde weeping over mothers in her care.
