15 Major Historical Inaccuracies That Undermine Famous Movies

Philomena is great and one of the most underrated Best Picture nominees of recent times, but it does, like many similar movies, take some artistic license that hurts its credibility somewhat.

Philomena is about an Irish woman who was sent to a convent as a punishment for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Her child was taken away from her and sent to America. 50 years later, Philomena (Judi Dench) and journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) try to track him down.

Philomena is largely accurate, but at the end, the film deviates heavily from reality. The film does have an incredible ending; the film concludes with a heated confrontation between Sixsmith and one of the nuns, before Philomena chooses to forgive the nun despite what she's done to her (the nun had kept her and her son apart). This ending is incredible, but it's made up.

The nun depicted here, Sister Hildegarde, died in 1995 while Sixsmith began his investigation in 2004, so they wouldn't have met. The film also depicts Hildegarde as a remorseless villain when in real life she actually helped reunite mothers with their children, so it was quite unfair to depict her in such a negative manner. It would've been far better to invent a nun or use a composite.

Philomena does feel overly harsh on the nuns (Sixsmith said he got on with them very well in real life), which gives it an unfortunate feel of anti-Christian propaganda.