One family is caught in the conflict of 1960s Ireland in the latest trailer forBelfast,a new drama from directorKenneth Branagh.
“How can I leave Belfast?” Balfe asks Dornan in the trailer, above. “Everybody likes them and everybody looks after them,” she adds, referring to their children.
Jamie Dornan and Ciarán Hinds inBelfast.Rob Youngson/Focus Features
When she asks Dornan what he wants, he replies, “I want my family with me. I want you.”
In a voiceover at the start of the trailer,Judi Dench’s character says, “We all have a story to tell, but what makes each one different is not how the story ends, but rather, the place where it begins.”
Belfastis based on Branagh’s own experiences growing up in Ireland as a young boy, and while she and Dornan play fictional versions of his parents, the director’s siblings each make cameos in the film, Balfe toldEntertainment Weekly.
Rob Youngson/Focus Features
“[Branagh] sent me the script before we’d spoken. It’s so full of heart, I got emotional reading it,” she toldEW,adding that her character, Ma, “just felt so familiar” and reminded her of her own childhood.
“Even though this is Ken’s story, he wanted us to connect with the things personal to us, and find similarities between ourselves and his parents,” she added.
Branagh reflected on his childhood in an interview withVanity Fair, looking back on the summer of 1969 when he was just eight years old and the Troubles political conflict first began.
Focus Features
“In a way, innocence was lost, things would never be the same again,” he said. “It’s something I’ve been trying to understand, as I grow older, that it was a moment when the world tried to insist that you put away childish things, and demanded that you are dragged into this perilous adulthood.”
Branagh wrote and directedBelfast,which first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and also stars Jude Hill as Buddy and Ciarán Hinds as Buddy’s grandfather.
Belfastpremieres in theaters Nov. 12.
source: people.com
