Kenneth Branagh’s love letter to his Belfast

If Paolo Sorrentino in It was the hand of God tells (and therefore elaborates) the most dramatic moment of his life, Kenneth Branagh with Belfast, already considered his masterpiece, it shows the moment he discovered what it really means to be Irish. The award-winning director, now 61, left his city of Belfast as a child to move to London and escape the troublesthe Northern Irish conflict between Catholics and Protestants that brought chaos to the country until the 1990s.

Belfastin cinemas from February 24 and nominated for seven Oscars, is thus his most intimate and autobiographical film, full of nostalgia and grace. It’s 1969 and Buddy (Jude Hill) is a kid from Belfast, fond of comics, dragons and – we’ll find out later – his classmate, Catherine. He lives with his older brother, his parents Ma (Caitríona Balfe) And Pa (Jamie Dornan) in a street inhabited by both Catholics and Protestants, very close to the grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds).

His world changes on an ordinary afternoon, when the street where he played chasing a dragon becomes a real battlefield: it is the beginning of the troubles, with a group of Protestants launching an attack on Catholics living in the same row of terraced houses as it. And Buddy finds himself motionless with his “shield”, which he was convinced was used to defend him only from dragons. His family is Protestant, but he sees no reason to hate, drive out or attack Catholics. He is still small and does not understand what is happening. With Buddy’s eyes, the reprisals mean that his beloved mother is always worried and that his father, a commuter worker in England, cannot live near his family. But the most important thing for Buddy remains the crush he has taken on his (Catholic) classmate, and the coins his grandmother hands him to buy her candy. The father, every time he goes away, tells him: “Be good, and if you can’t be good, be careful.”