Small Things Like These debuted to rave reviews after it opened Berlinale Film Festival last night.

Helmed by director Tim Mielants and penned by Enda Walsh, the film is based on Claire Keegan's novel Small Things Like These and delves into the harrowing realities of the Magdalene Laundries, which ran from the 1820s to 1996.

Cillian Murphy stars as Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and father to five daughters, who lives next door to a convent which was repurposed into a laundry. From there, Furlong begins to uncover harrowing secrets in his town as he unravels some shocking home truths of his own.

Critics praised the film for its vulnerable, understated dialogue which tarries an active emotional fault line. But it was Murphy’s mesmeric, tight-lipped performance which dazzled and amazed at Berlin’s Friedrichstadt-Palast.

Writing for Variety, Guy Lodge lauded Mielants' imposed outsider view and Walsh’s sharp, economic dialogue. "It’s [Cillian] Murphy's exquisitely pained performance, unclenching by fine degrees into something like grace, that gives Small Things Like These its eventual, fist-in-the-gut power," Lodge writes. "The film evades melodramatic confrontation to the last, ending elegantly at a point where many other stories might choose to begin."

Time Out also gave the film high praise, commenting: "It’s a profound performance by Murphy – perhaps even more so in fewer words than Oppenheimer – as Bill’s anger burns with tragic urgency. The question lingers: will you look or look away, act or stay silent?"

Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph wrote: "Small Things Like These is a tight-lipped Irish drama even more suffused with sadness than the log-line implies, and shouldered with hypnotic grace by a very special Cillian Murphy in his first post-Oppenheimer role."

In The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney said: "Led with aching sensitivity by Murphy (also a producer, alongside his Oppenheimer cast mate Matt Damon), this is a sombre, unhurried drama that takes its cue from the seeming quietness of the title and is all the more intensely moving for it."

At present, a wide theatrical release date for Small Things Like These has not been revealed, but its triumphant debut last night further confirms it as one of this year's most highly-anticipated films.