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.