A warm, personal coming-of-age drama with strong performances and a vivid sense of memory, but it can feel more like a polished recollection than a fully lived-in portrait of the Troubles. If you respond to intimate family stories, gentle humor, and nostalgic black-and-white filmmaking, it has a lot to offer.
55% ★★★☆☆ (373,798)
Belfast
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Drama · History · PG-13
2021 · 1h 38m · ★ 55% (373.8K)
No matter how far you go, you never forget where you came from.
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Starring: Jude Hill, Jamie Dornan, Caitríona Balfe
Overview
Buddy is a young boy on the cusp of adolescence, whose life is filled with familial love, childhood hijinks, and a blossoming romance. Yet, with his beloved hometown caught up in increasing turmoil, his family faces a momentous choice: hope the conflict will pass or leave everything they know behind for a new life.
Director
Kenneth Branagh
Production
TKBC, Northern Ireland Screen
Cast
Jude Hill, Jamie Dornan, Caitríona Balfe, Lewis McAskie, Judi Dench, Ciarán Hinds, Lara McDonnell, Colin Morgan, Gerard Horan, Josie Walker, Olive Tennant, Michael Maloney, Turlough Convery, Conor MacNeill, Chris McCurry, Elly Condron, Samuel Menhinick, Vanessa Ifediora, Gerard McCarthy, Sid Sagar
Curator Review
Verdict
A warm, personal coming-of-age drama with strong performances and a vivid sense of memory, but it can feel more like a polished recollection than a fully lived-in portrait of the Troubles. If you respond to intimate family stories, gentle humor, and nostalgic black-and-white filmmaking, it has a lot to offer.
Best for
viewers who like intimate childhood memoirs
fans of gentle, emotional family dramas
people interested in a soft-focus entry point to historical conflict
audiences drawn to nostalgic black-and-white cinematography
Skip if
you want a hard-hitting political drama about the Troubles
you dislike sentimental or Oscar-bait-adjacent storytelling
you prefer highly specific social realism over memory-piece filmmaking
you want a film with constant narrative momentum
Overview
Belfast is Kenneth Branagh’s memory film: affectionate, selective, and shaped by the emotional logic of childhood. It finds its strongest moments in the ordinary rhythms of family life, where jokes, music, and neighborhood rituals keep pushing against the pressure of unrest outside the front door.
Worth noting
The cast gives the film its warmth, especially in the domestic scenes, and the black-and-white photography adds a storybook distance that suits the material when it works. At times, though, that same distance can make the film feel generalized, as if it is reaching for universal feeling at the expense of local detail and political texture.
Bottom line
As a piece of personal filmmaking, it is sincere and often moving. As a historical drama, it is gentler and less confrontational than many viewers will expect, which makes it either a comforting entry point or a frustrating softening of the subject depending on your taste.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Karsten (1.5★) · 4420 likes
there’s a scene in here that’s just a wide where the kid goes, “daddy are we gonna have to leave belfast?” the dad pauses, and then they immediately cut out of that scene. scenes and moments like this are littered throughout this film, all captured in a wide angle lens that makes the memories of branagh’s memoir feel cartoonishly distant from us. in this scene, he’s showing us an idea — that this kid is childishly unaware of the world
demi adejuyigbe · 4289 likes
put this on when Cheyenne said she wanted to watch something this evening that didn’t have any death in it. as soon as the grandpa got up and started dancing i said “okay I’m very sorry but that man is going to die.” if an old guy dances in a movie, it’s cause you’re supposed to be sad when he dies. supposed to go “oh noooo, i loved that guy. he danced”
James (Schaffrillas) (1.5★) · 4165 likes
"We had a neural network watch 100 Best Picture nominees and then asked it to create its own"
Luke (2★) · 2838 likes
A good movie if you’ve only seen 4 or 5 movies
john (3.5★) · 1741 likes
I don’t care if it’s Oscar bait, it was cute and almost made me cry like four times.