Kenneth Branagh's Belfast film is set to land on screens across the UK & Ireland this January, with viewers here finally getting a chance to see why it has been creating such a buzz internationally.
Belfast tells the story of 9-year old Buddy (played by Jude Hill), whose innocent childhood is interrupted by the onset of the troubles in Northern Ireland in 1969.
Praised for its directing, cinematography and its depiction of 1960s/1970s Belfast, it might come as a surprise to learn that most of Belfast wasn't actually filmed in its titular city.
Despite the fact that Northern Ireland has become a hub for filmmaking in recent years, Belfast was mainly shot in England on specially constructed sets.
This was mainly due to uncertainties surrounding Covid when filming began back in mid-2020, which meant that Branagh and his team couldn't shoot in busy streets in north Belfast.
In a Hollywood Reporter feature on the film, they wrote: "Because of COVID-19 restrictions, shooting on location wasn’t going to be an option, and even if it were, Belfast had changed dramatically since the ’60s.
"That said, Branagh, [production designers] Clay and Zambarloukos did a scout around the city on bikes and walked the routes Branagh would as a child (although he notes that half of the street he grew up on “wasn’t there anymore”).
"Studio space also was an impossibility, with most locations still full of productions that had been gathering dust during lockdown."
Instead, sets for the film were built just outside of London, on the end of a runway at Farnborough Airport, with the interiors constructed around an abandoned school.
Belfast ‘s main street didn’t have to be a replica of the original, but production designer Jim Clay said the main aim was to “capture the spirit of the era.”
Despite this, production did move to Belfast after shooting in London and the aerial shots of modern day Belfast - featured during the beginning and the end of the film - were, of course, filmed in the city.
