Kenneth Branagh returns to a more personal cinema. After The crime of the Orient Express and Death on the Nilethis time he focuses on his childhood in Ireland at the end of the 1960s. Belfast is a tender autobiographical fresco in which the director has entrusted the roles of his loved ones to Jamie Dornan, Catriona Balfe, Ciaran Hinds and Judi Dench.
“It’s my life but I hope it will speak to the widest audience, explains Kenneth Branagh to 20 minutes. If my childhood is unique as they all are, the transition to adulthood is something bittersweet in which everyone should be able to relate. Civil war-torn Belfast is not easy for a 9-year-old boy who discovers violence during a summer that will change his life.
A tribute to his mother and to the cinema
“ Belfast is a tribute to my mother, recognizes the filmmaker. She was an amazing woman, a real movie character. She was very gentle but could turn into a tigress when it came to her children. This determined mom can protect her young son with a trash can lid or drive him back to a looted store to return a stolen cereal box. “She would no doubt have been delighted to see herself represented on the screen like this,” laughs Kenneth Branagh.
Supported by his appointed chief operator Haris Zambarloukos, the filmmaker recreates the city of his youth in superb black and white that allows the viewer to travel through time. “The city seemed monochromatic to me throughout this period, including what I could watch on television. Everything stayed gray in my mind,” he recalls.
His only escape was the cinema to which Belfast pays a vibrant tribute in bright colors. “It was at this time that I learned to love the 7th Art which opened a window on the world, he says. I felt like the two worlds came together when I saw fictional cowboys on screen and real men acting like savages in town. “We can think of Billy Elliott by discovering this vibrant tale of humanity where family and history come together to form a future creator.
“Films helped me understand the world at a tender age when everything seemed very complicated to me and where I had no decision-making power”, insists Kenneth Branagh. We are delighted that he took that of realizing Belfast, an intimate film that touches on the universal. His film was nominated six times for the Oscars.