Convent film likened to Nazi movies

AN award-winning film about brutality in Irish convents has been compared to Nazi-era propaganda by a high-powered Catholic group.

The Catholic League, a US-based lobby group, has called for 'The Magdalene Sisters', to be scrapped only weeks after it won the Gold Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival and the Critics Award in the Toronto Film Festival.

Set in 1960s Ireland, the movie follows the lives of four young women placed in convents where women who got pregnant outside of marriage were forced to do menial tasks and wereoften physically abused.

The Catholic League has appealed to the Disney corporation to drop the film's distributors, Miramax and compared the 'Magdalene Sisters' director, Peter Mullan, to Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi-era director who made Hitler's best propaganda films.

The League is known for its boycotts of film distributors, and in 1995 it persuaded an Irish Catholic group to drop $3million worth of Disney stock because of a film about a gay priest.

League president William Donohue said the League would launch a "relentless protest" against the film and also claimed Miramax had already distributed a series of anti-Catholic films .

"Harvey Weinstein of Miramax is known for such anti-Catholic movies as 'Priest,' 'Butcher Boy,' and '40 Days and 40 Nights," he said.

Conditions were harsh by today's standards but they were not uncommon in their day: historians have recounted how Protestant-run institutions were similar," Mr Donohue added.