A film critic returns home to ask: who owns the story of a war?
The film marks 50 years since riots erupted across Northern Ireland, widely seen as the beginning of the thirty-year conflict known as The Troubles. Mark Cousins – who left Belfast at 18 – returns to his hometown to reflect on how the place and its history have been used and occasionally abused by cinema. He traces how the legacy of division has impacted on the nation’s cinematic imagination; and, in a city that once had one of the highest rates of movie-going in the UK, he scrambles around the ruins of Belfast’s once-grand cinemas.
Direction
Cousins' essayistic voice reshapes documentary conventions.
Cinematography
Ruined cinemas as ghost characters, beautifully mourned.
Director
Brian Henry Martin
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Belfast once had more cinemas per capita than almost any UK city; Cousins scrambles through their corpses as both memorial and accusation.
The film deliberately excludes Hollywood's Troubles hits (In the Name of the Father, '71) to platform local voices—Cousins is curating a counter-archive.
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