Memories of Home: The Belfast Films of Mark Cousins and Kenneth Branagh

Abstract

This article discusses Mark Cousin’s I Am Belfast (2015) and Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast (2022) as autobiographical cinema. While acknowledging the multiple differences between each film, I argue that they also share many common themes and motifs. These include a determination to depict Belfast as a city shaped as much by a down-to-earth working class identified by their sense of community as by its official history of the Troubles. Both celebrate friendships across the religious divide, and both share a utopian sensibility, expressed as much through aesthetics as narrative devices. My argument centres on the imaginative construction of Belfast in both films, while also drawing attention to how devices, such as the inclusion of songs by Van Morrison, open the works up to a wider process of exilic identity construction. I also consider the issue of ‘cultural Protestantism’ as evidenced in Branagh’s film and how cinema’s own history intersects with the personal histories of both film-makers.