Oranges and Sunshine

Oranges and Sunshine (2010) is a drama directed by Jim Loach — watch online on iFILM. Emily Watson plays Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham who in 1986 took on what looked like a single missing-persons enquiry: an Australian woman searching for British parents she'd been separated from as a child. The thread she pulled unravelled a practice stretching back centuries — children shipped from Britain to Australia and other Commonwealth nations, often told their families were dead, stripped of any record of who they were.

Hugo Weaving and David Wenham play two men on the receiving end of that system, and the film's power comes from their quiet scenes with Watson rather than from courtroom drama or institutional confrontation. Loach keeps the tone restrained throughout. What makes it land is exactly that restraint — and Watson's performance, which turns Margaret into someone stubbornly ordinary rather than a crusader. Stream Oranges and Sunshine (2010) online on iFILM.