BRINGING to light the harrowing stories of four women who spent time in the Magdalene Laundries, the documentary The Forgotten Maggies generated massive public interest and media attention on its debut at the Galway Film Fleadh earlier this year.
Directed by Steven O’Riordan, the documentary will be shown in Glór this month and Steven will be in Ennis for the screening.
Speaking about the film, Steven said, “The documentary film itself is no Hollywood blockbuster. It’s very raw and sometimes emotionally challenging. However, what it does do is show and tell the sincere understanding we had for these women and the willingness to fight against both Church and State and the impact this has on a wider audience, which is something a lot of documentaries sometimes miss.”

Before making this film, Steven had no direct experience of making a full-length feature. However, he explained that he was determined to tell these women’s stories when the idea for the project first came to him.
“After seeing Peter Mullan’s film The Magdalene Sisters I decided to do a follow-on from that, as I discovered that no Irish person had ever documented these women’s stories. I believed as a young person living in Ireland it was essential that people became aware or familiar with what happened to the women after the laundries closed down,” he said.
With no experience or funding, Steven decided to make the film himself, using money he earned from a part-time shop job to fund the costs. He bought a camcorder to film or record interviews. Later, cameramen Seamus Hegarty and Gerard Boland came on board the project. Two months into filming by himself, Steven came across a website that led him to Maureen O’Sullivan, a survivor of the laundries.
“Maureen and I spent a further four months talking about her life, how she had struggled and how she was fighting to become the first woman in the history of the State to prove and show that the Magdalene Laundries, like the industrial schools, were State funded. I had no idea how I would go about helping Maureen to do this but I had decided that I wanted to do a documentary/film which looked at how difficult it was for someone like Maureen to get any sort of justice in Ireland, let alone recognition within modern 21st century Ireland,” he said.
After much research, Steven made contact with three women in England who were willing to talk about their experiences. These were Kathleen Legg, Mary Collins, who spoke on behalf of her mother who was in a Magdalene Laundry in Cork, and Mary King.
“These women had never told their stories to anyone and all of them felt it was the right time to let people know how they survived and what they experienced after they got out of the institutions,” explained Steven.
“Nobody, including our families, expected us to stick at the idea, probably because we were so young, inexperienced and lacking in any proper funds. However, I think because we felt we had a point to prove and we knew what the women were expressing was true and incredible, we stuck at it,” said Steven.
He said that everyone connected with the documentary wanted to do justice to the women’s stories. “As the subject is serious and upsetting for many to try and recall I felt it was important that we allowed these women to tell us what they could. Luckily, we built a solid relationship with all the women involved and this helped us to ensure a sound understanding of what we wanted to achieve. All the women had no hesitation in opening up, as they saw first-hand we had their interests at heart.”
According to Steven, the film is “light-hearted, sad, funny, intelligent, compelling, upsetting but above all true to who we are as individuals and of course the women involved. There are no special effects, lighting or make-up used. It shows the women for who they are, which is honest, sincere, forward, delicate, endearing and broken women, but above all fighting – fighting for their right to be recognised as individuals in a modern 21st century Ireland.”
During the process, Steven had travelled to England, where he started his own acting career, graduating at Bath Spa University. But any spare minute he had was spent working on the documentary. In all, they gathered over 78 hours of footage, which was eventually edited into the story first envisioned when Steven spoke to Maureen three years previously.
The film was showcased at the Galway Film Fleadh, with Steven and his crew contacting media, politicians, women’s groups and human rights organisations in order to get the word out. The film sold out, with national news teams covering the event.
“There was so much hype, excitement and anticipation around the fact that three young lads bothered to do this that people were willing to support it. And, of course, one of the major catches was that these women were speaking for the first time,” Steven recalled.
Since the screening in Galway, Eileen Reilly of Glucksman House Ireland has asked Steven to travel to New York on October 1 to screen the film for a general audience of 180 people. He has also been contacted by the Irish American Heritage Centre in Boston to do a screening as well as a number of other US organisations.
The Forgotten Maggies will be shown in Glór, Ennis on Wednesday, September 23.