Alan in Belfast: Stolen – gifted, sold, starved, neglected, denied, and trafficked (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 3 November)

Stolen will be shown in schools across Ireland in years to come – spread over a couple of periods since the 102 minute film would bust a single lesson – to remind students about a horrible history that so many people overlooked at the time, saying nothing and passing by on the other side of the street, while others were directly complicit in its enabling. The film will be a testament to the parents and children (often one person could be both at the same time) who found themselves in a mother and baby home.

From a playground in Tuam, County Galway to the site of an old home in Roscrea, County Tipperary, Margo Harkin’s documentary has thoughtful contributions from parents, children, academics, journalists, artists, and – very movingly – through the words and voices of poets.

Filmed over a decade, we are reminded about Ireland’s piety and the church’s attitudes to sex (and its sinful policing of it). Around 9,000 children were removed from their birth mothers. Gifted, sold, starved, neglected, denied, and trafficked. If you live on the island, north or south, and you’ll know someone to whom this happened to their extended family. Often it wasn’t – and still isn’t – talked about, but the stories and the pain are there, all around.

There’s the joy in the eyes of one mum’s recollection of the reunion with her son on the eve of his 40th birthday. And there’s deep sadness in the eyes of someone born in a home who only tracked down their mother nine years after she died. It took a long time for the past to come to the surface and be spotted. The film speculates that the fuss and furore might have died out if the story hadn’t pricked international ears. Since then, the imperfect commissions and inquiries – which have tended not to be victim-centred and are seen by contributors to play into some in the Catholic Church’s reluctance to be fully transparent about what happened – have added to the pain. Graves will be exhumed in Tuam. But not elsewhere.

Stolen captures the sense that the process of understanding the mother and baby home ‘scandal’ can today be framed by some as nearly being over, while for many it has only begun. There was a lifelong emotional impact on the mothers and babies. But no shame or responsibility was heaped on the fathers. There’s something rotten about how a society could do that without much challenge. (Pray For Our Sinners was released earlier this year and is a good companion piece with its exploration of people who were allies and offered resistance to the actions of the church and state.)

Questions remain about whether the state is still protecting itself and large institutions? Have commission rules been deliberately set to frustrate those giving evidence, or is that just a hapless bureaucratic accident? How did international medical trials end up using Ireland’s captive population of institutionalised young babies to test new vaccines? Why are medical records so difficult to access? Why did coroners not protest at the infant mortality rate and the causes of death in mother and baby homes?

Stolen is a tough watch but a valuable reminder about what should never be forgotten, individually or collectively. It finds joy among the significant sorrow. It offers some hope, though laced with acknowledgement that too little is being done too late. It’s being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 3 November.