The main ceremony of Oscar Awards 2022 is shortly to be done. The complete list of nominees has everyone expecting to know which actors and actresses, as well as directors and technical team, will win the long-awaited golden statuettes in their respective categories. However, one of the most anticipated sections of the night is, without a doubt, when they name the best film.
This year, 10 feature films compete to win the award. Although many of them have already arrived on streaming, some are still going through theaters. In this way, one of those that has recently arrived in Peruvian theaters was “Belfast”a film that continues to win laurels and applause since its premiere, and is one of the favorites at the Oscars.
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The film is directed by Kenneth Branagh and mainly stars Jude Hill, a young actor who is accompanied on stage by renowned figures such as Jamie Dorman (“50 Shades of Grey”), Caitriona Balfe (“Outlander”, which has just released its 6 season) , Judi Dench (“Shakespeare in love”), and more.
Unlike most of its rivals, however, “Belfast” is a true-life story, drawing from Branagh’s past to deliver a vivid portrait of historical events that marked a generation of Irish people. Next, we tell you more details.
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The reality of a Belfast in destruction
At the beginning of the film in question, we see how the young protagonist, Buddy, is playing the most normal in his neighborhood. But the tranquility of an innocent afternoon with friends is interrupted when a mob attacks the place.
A panning shot shows us men using chains as weapons, Molotov cocktails being thrown at houses, panic and despair. In this way, we are presented, crudely and without warning, with an armed attack.
The real story behind the riots we see in the plot goes back to August 1969. They began on the 12th of that month in Derry. Like an expanding force from one of their projectiles, the chaos soon spread to Belfast and other Northern Irish cities. To support the area in question, on August 14, the United Kingdom sent in the British Army to help quell the riots.
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Although this situation was not one of the first to occur in Northern Ireland in the 1960s, the 1969 events in Belfast were among the most damaging. But the film itself does not offer a complete context, but rather a partial look at the panorama that began many years ago.
In fact, we are presented with Protestants as the bully group, and Catholics as the underdog minority just looking to survive in an unsafe and dangerous environment for young people, all within a small dead end for worried families. However, the view is broader.
As explained by the Screen Rant portal, the roots of the problem date back to the British colonization of Irish territory from the 16th to the 20th century. In that sense, when Ireland achieved its independence, the big problem was whether the area of Ulster, where a large number of English had settled, was going to continue to be part of Ireland.
That is when Great Britain and the leaders of the Irish independence movement negotiated a treaty, which stipulated that Ulster would become part of the United Kingdom.
This decision was not well received among Irish nationalists. For this reason, a civil war broke out within the newly created Republic and the tension ended up finding two sides: the unionists, predominantly Irish Catholics, who wanted Ulster to be part of the Republic of Ireland, and the loyalists, with a Protestant majority. , who wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom.
After years of confrontation, the end came -to a large extent- in 1998 after the Good Friday Agreement.
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