Philomena (2013)

In Philomena, unemployed journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) is desperate after an unfair firing following a scandal when he’s handed a poignant human-interest story. After 50 years, Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) wants to search for a son she’d been forced to surrender to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart at the Sean Ross Abbey in Ireland, one of the Magdalene Laundries. Together, Sixsmith and Lee travel to Ireland and then Washington, DC, tracking down leads to reveal the identity of her son who’d been adopted by rich American Catholics, and along the way forge an unlikely bond. Read the rest of the review here.