50 years on i could not escape from the feeling that what happened one one summer's day in 1969
really was the most dominant and influential event in my life the riot that followed completely
transformed the street that i lived in and in those 20 seconds where it began
um i subsequently found myself thinking oh those were the 20 seconds that changed my life where
everything was turned upside down the very ground on which we walk was lifted
it was on our side that done all that there is no our side in their side in our street well
there didn't used to be anyway we're living in a civil war this is the time to make a new start
my math says if we went across the water we wouldn't understand where we talk shouldn't be
a problem i've been married to your granny for 50 years i've never understood a word you said
what do you want i want you and granny to come too belfast uh sort of chronicles relatively short
period of time about a six month period of time in 1969 in belfast in the north of ireland and it
follows uh one family as they are sort of thrust into this uh the beginnings of what would end up
being a 30-year civil war and uh dealing with everything that comes with that and and what a
normal regular family who didn't ask for it would have to deal with and make decisions as to get the
family out in the best and safest way possible and you play and i play with my i play pause the
father to the young it's all seen through the eyes of a of a nine-year-old boy called buddy i play
haha he's his father what ken rana has tried to do is to offer up his memory of being an innocent boy
in a city called belfast that was suddenly his life was ripped apart but also he wanted to show
the kind of the joy of living the the humor of people the necessity
of neighbors and neighborliness this was his homage to his childhood and the people of belfast
and to be asked to be involved in that was not just an honor for me but uh truly a thrill
it's so personal to ken obviously it's it's an interpretation it's very close to the reality
of his his life story and being from belfast it's it's very meaningful that that we tell this story
well and that we show that place and those people in a respectful light you know and uh give people
a different understanding of what they've maybe seen from that part of the world with previous
movies that all have their place but i don't think it's been seen like this before so um
for me personally to play someone from belfast and you know a sort of a good man trying to do the
right thing it's uh so far one off for me and uh something i really cherished i think when you film
something about your home and even though everyone else likes to remind me that i'm not from belfast
i'm really not from that far away and these people just felt so familiar to me
and i think when you film something like that it resonates somewhere definitely with you in
a deeper place and you know ma and granny and you know all of these people they they just reminded
me of people in my own family or people i know people have grown up with and you know they're the
best of people they're the people from northern ireland are wickedly funny um some of them
they're you know they're strong and they're resilient and and it was just really great to
be able to to sort of show them to the world they understood irishness they understood the humor
that the belfast people have they understood the ferocity of irish women and the way in which they
run they run things thank god um and uh i think you know they understood the sort of lust for life
that is at the center of the movie and the the preciousness of the experience that we had making
it and jamie and katrina aside from them being brilliant actors they're incredibly glamorous and
that's how the nine-year-old me saw my parents and kieran hines and judy dench have a touch
of the poet you know they're unafraid of being poetic and naughty and giggly and in jude hill
i met somebody who had this incredible capacity to be present while listening i knew that half
of his performance would be listening to other people and i needed to be completely compelled
by this young sponge of a boy taking it all in and he had that and uh they all understood somehow
their irishness and were happy to express it so i was very lucky to have them in the movie
you