Kenneth Branagh talks about bringing to life his very personal film, ‘Belfast’

Oscar-nominated actor and director Kenneth Branagh had been thinking of writing a movie about his childhood for a long time, but it was the pandemic that allowed him to finally tell his story.

He wrote and directed “Belfast,” a semi-autobiographical film that follows nine-year-old Buddy and his working class family during the tumult of the late 1960s in the Northern Irish capital. It won the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, a prize that is often a harbinger for the Academy Awards: the winners in the last nine years have gone on to receive Best Picture Oscar nominations.

In an interview, Branagh talked about how the pandemic led him to “Belfast.” He saw some parallels between the questions that arose during COVID-19 and during the conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.

“For me it went right back to, I think, people consider what are you going to do with your career? Because now maybe you can work at home if you’re lucky enough to have a job. What do you do with your family? Because maybe you could live somewhere else. Big questions in people’s own lives came up that were prompted by this … This was all happening because people’s lives were threatened.

“And that’s the other thing I suppose that led me back into ‘Belfast’ was that, of course, there are great moments of tenderness and laughter and everything else that was happening in the life that we had. But around it was unquestionably and tangibly a threat to your lives,” he said, referring to the violent conflict that erupted in the late 1960s between mostly Protestant unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom and mostly Catholic nationalists who wanted it to join the Republic of Ireland in the south.”

The 1960s were an important, life-altering period for Branagh and the film allowed the 60-year-old director some introspection.

“I suppose one of the reasons to make the film was you’re essentially sort of making a journey back to yourself,” said Branagh, whose family moved to Reading, England, when he was nine. “We left that massive extended family, the extended family of all our siblings, cousins and everything, and everybody in the streets around.

“The journey away from there was to experience the absolute opposite of that: a tiny nuclear family on its own, sounding different, stepping up a little bit in the economic chain; you’ve got this little garden for whatever that represented. You did have two inside toilets for whatever that represented, but you didn’t have all the rest of it. And you talked differently and so, over the years … I think I ended up being sort of invisible. I ended up diving into other identities, eventually becoming an actor where, you know, you’ve spent your whole life in disguise.”

The COVID lockdown helped him unlock his past in Belfast, where he was born.

“There was this sort of absolute innate desire while there was time, if there was time, to look at yourself and say, ‘Well, who am I?’ Because they say the cliches about ‘You can take the boy out of Belfast, but you can’t take Belfast out of the boy’ or the Jesuits who say, ‘Give me the child till seven and I’ll show you the adult.’ I thought, ‘Well, if that’s true, then is it that kid still in there?’ So I wanted to go find out if he was and even sort of own it.”

Branagh rounded up an all-star cast to play his family, including Jamie Dornan as Pa, Caitriona Balfe as Ma, Ciarán Hinds as Pop and Judi Dench as Granny. Playing the role of Buddy, a stand-in for young Branagh, is newcomer Jude Hill.

The most important memory depicted in the film involves Branagh’s mother dragging him back into a store that was being looted during a riot when she learned her son had stolen something.

“The tipping point for us leaving (Belfast) was indeed my mother dragging me back into that supermarket. It’s tragic-comic in the sense that it’s, of course, absurd,” Branagh said. “This woman who would take the bullet for you, she would literally walk in front of a train for you, but when it comes to this other part of her brain saying, ‘The other thing I’ve got to teach you is “Thou shalt not steal”’ … but you really shouldn’t go back into a riot situation where a supermarket is being looted, with the police and the army coming, with your child merely to point out that you must never do that again …”

Branagh reminisced fondly about that moment and the packet of washing powder he had brought back, “like carrying a sort of triumphant deer or something … But it’s also that I thought, ‘Well, it’s not chocolate. So it’s not for me, it’s for the family.’”

Hill, who’s 11, carries the weight of the movie, bringing pure innocence and heart to the coming-of-age tale. He’s already being touted for awards season, with his work highly praised by critics.

“He’s very present … a serious young man in some ways,” Branagh said about the young actor. “So he had a little head on his shoulders, a slightly older soul quality, too, but he’s an Irish dancer, so very physically adroit, very used to practising, very used to discipline.”

Referring to a scene in which Buddy says he doesn’t want to leave Belfast, Branagh said it’s about “I don’t want to grow up, I don’t have to worry about things. I don’t want to lose grandparents, I don’t want to do this human thing. And now I’m going to lose my sense of identity.” Hill, he said, “ had a deep understanding that there was this big sort of spiritual life tooth to be pulled. And it was going to be tough.

“You needed him to be able to listen about the process of acting enough to be able to sort of touch on some of these deeper things,” Branagh added. “But I think that this discipline with his Irish dancing was quite key.”

As for Dornan, known for projects like the TV series “The Fall” and the “Fifty Shades of Grey” movies, what did Branagh see in him that fit the bill to play his father? “A very dry, twinkly humour?” Branagh said. “I would say Jamie is very funny, very laconic. He’s rarely without a significant twinkle in his eye. You see him look at the world in a very amused fashion. My father definitely had that.”

He noted that Dornan has three children himself and “You just see that difference in somebody when you know they’re embracing parenthood, and all the wonders and the miracles of what people feel. This is somebody who will do absolutely anything and everything to protect his kids. So he had those two things: a massively deep wry sense of humour and a very, very strong sense of duty and responsibility …

“My father was someone who would tell us silly jokes, you know dark jokes, and was quite happy in himself as long as things were going OK. Jamie understood that and understands that kind of quality in certain Irishmen.”