Kenneth Branagh’s new movie Belfast is a cinematic memoir of the actor and filmmaker’s childhood in Northern Ireland.
With a stellar cast featuring Judi Dench (Granny) and Ciarán Hinds (Pop), Jamie Dornan (Pa), and Caitriona Balfe (Ma), Luke Hill plays the young Branagh whose life is about to be turned upside down.
Speaking to Stephen Colbert, Branagh explained the personal story behind the movie. “I was born in Belfast and I lived there until I was nine,” he began. “The story of the film is about something that happened to me when I was nine years old, and my family and I, we lived a life that could advertise the idea that it takes a village to raise a child.” Branagh said he lived on a street where many of his parents’ siblings lived and he grew up with many of his cousins close by.
“In the hot summer of 1969, violence spread onto the streets and there was a moment when I thought I was hearing a swarm of bees a little way away but it wasn’t bees, I turned around, life got very surreal and it turned out to be a crowd of rioters that were coming up our street and eventually smashing the windows of the catholic houses, we were a predominantly protestant street, living very peacefully with out catholic neighbours,” Branagh continued.
“Literally, the world turned upside down, the ground on which we stood was lifted, and the paving stones were put onto a barricade at the end of the street, either end of the street, we were walking on sand, literally the living metaphor of the world turning upside down, and really from that moment my life never followed any expected track.”
