Kenneth Branagh

Actor, director, writer and Knight Bachelor Kenneth Branagh has been telling stories on stage and screen for four decades. His latest project, the autobiographical Belfast, is his most personal yet, and – as he tells Total Film – makes him marvel at how far he has come from movie-mad Duncairn kid to Hollywood dream maker…

- By Jane Crowther

''IMAGINING MY CAREER WASN’T THE HARD PART. THE IDEA THAT YOU COULD EVER DO IT – THAT SEEMED IMPOSSIBLE''

I’m basically a forward-looking kind of guy,” shrugs Sir Kenneth Branagh when we catch up with him in LA in early September as he shuttles between the Telluride Film Festival and TIFF. “I don’t really look back. I’m not somebody who has lots of things on the mantelpiece and lots of mementos and stuff…” He taps his temple. “I have them in here.”

The memories trapped in that head of his have been poured out in the last 18 months, though, as Branagh has recalled his childhood in Northern Ireland, specifically in the late summer of 1969 when his idyllic existence was shattered by sectarian unrest, for a self-reflective film titled after his birthplace. Writing Belfast during the first Covid lockdown and filming it during the lull in infections of last summer, the 60-year-old’s monochrome movie follows nine-year-old Buddy (newcomer Jude Hill) as he witnesses violence on his street and the torment of his parents (Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe) in deciding whether to leave all they know (including grandparents Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds) for a safer life in London. Buddy escapes his real-world via trips to the cinema, where big-screen delights are rendered in eye-popping technicolour, like Dorothy first stepping into Oz.