“Belfast” by Kenneth Branagh

Northern Ireland in the late ‘60s. Nineyear-old Buddy lives in a world marked by class struggle and cultural revolutions. When the Troubles flare up – the clashes between Republican Catholics and Unionist Protestants – Buddy dreams of a future away from the violence, in the comfort of his cheerful family. But the turmoil gets worse, and Buddy’s family must decide whether to wait till it blows over, or start a whole new life.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
In the late 1960s, Belfast went through an incredibly tumultuous period of its history, very dramatic, sometimes violent, which my family and I were caught up in. It’s taken me fifty years to find the right way to write about it, to find the tone I wanted. The story of my childhood, which inspired the film, has become a story of the point in everyone’s life when the child crosses over into adulthood, where innocence is lost. That point of crossover, in Belfast in 1969, was accelerated by the tumult happening around