Oscars 2022: Kenneth Branagh finally rewarded

Director Kenneth Branagh won the Oscar for best original screenplay, the first of his career, for his black and white drama “Belfast”, a love letter to his hometown, in which he recounts the violence in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, through the innocent eyes of a 9-year-old boy.

The 61-year-old filmmaker was the same age as his young hero when, with his relatives, he had to leave Belfast to join England in order to escape the “Troubles”, a civil war between Catholics, supporters of reunification with the Ireland, and Protestants, defenders of belonging to the United Kingdom.

This award is “a great honor to a great city and fantastic people”, he declared this Sunday, March 27 on the stage of the traditional Dolby Theater in Hollywood, explaining that it is “a story about the search for joy, for hope, in the face of violence, of loss”.

“This story is above all the search for hope in spite of violence.”

Kenneth Branagh receives the#Oscars Best Original Screenplay for Belfast pic.twitter.com/GqQR0oTonT

– CANAL + Cinema (@CanalplusCinema) March 28, 2022

First nominated by the academy in 1990 for his adaptation of the play ‘Henry V’ by william shakespeareKenneth Branagh had already broken an Oscar nomination record by becoming the first person to have been cited in seven different categories since the start of his career.

He was also nominated for the Oscars in 1996 in the category of best adapted screenplay for “Hamlet”, a film of more than 4 hours for which he endorsed the caps of screenwriter, director and main actor, and in 2012 for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, for “My week with Marilyn”, by Simon Curtis.

That same year, the British director was given the title of “Sir Kenneth” by the Queen Elizabeth II during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. He was knighted for his Shakespearean roles, but also for his social action in Northern Ireland.

Carried by lively, millimeter staging, and splendid photography, “Belfast”, which takes on the air of a western, was also crowned best British film at the BAFTA 2022 and received the 2022 Golden Globe for Best Screenplay. Rhythmed by the scores of Van Morrison, this feature film is served by a high-flying cast.

a film dedicated “to those who stayed, who left, and to all those who were lost”

We can only salute the sincere performance and all in nuance of the young Jude Hill, and that we discover for the first time playing armed with a wooden sword and a dustbin lid. An object that, moments later, becomes a real shield for him and his mother, played by Caitríona Balfe.

Loving, devoted, and discreetly elegant, she tries to make the right choices when her indebted husband, played by Jamie Dornan, alias Christian Gray in the erotic saga “Fifty Shades of Grey”, is forced to work in England as a carpenter. .

In addition to these two actors of Irish origin, who form a close-knit and authentic couple, we also come across the Oscar-winning actress Judi Dench (“James Bond”), luminous in the role of the grandmother, as well as Ciaran Hinds, the great -father “pop”. This duo greatly contributes to the success of this film mixing humor and emotions, and dedicated “to those who stayed, who left, and to all those who were lost”, can we read at the end of the feature film.

In November, when the film was released, the director explained that the idea had come to him “from this silence that many of us have experienced” with the confinements linked to the pandemic of coronavirus.