Song for a Raggy Boy

A non-clergy teacher, William Franklin, is hired at St. Jude's, a Catholic reformatory school near a small village in Ireland in 1939, shortly after his girlfriend was killed during the Spanish Civil War where they were both fighting on the side of the Communists. As the haunted widower tries to bring literacy and a love of the written word into the lives of the young boys who are his students, William finds himself clashing with the violent (and/or sexually deviant) monks who rule over the students with steel hands, forcing them to live by arbitrary rules. When on Christmas Dag, two boys are severely beaten up, he goes head-to-head with Brother John. Bit this brutal prefect is determined to find out why Franklin gad decided to teach at St. Jude's, which results in more violence, with unimaginable consequences.