Focus Features picks up Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Belfast’ with Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe

Focus Features has acquired the worldwide rights to Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. Written and directed by Academy Award nominee Branagh, Belfast is the humorous, tender and intensely personal story of one boy’s childhood during the tumult of the late 1960s.

The cast stars Golden Globe nominee Caitriona Balfe, Academy Award winner Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan, Ciaran Hinds, and introduces Jude Hill.  Dornan and Balfe play a glamorous working class couple caught up in the mayhem, with Dench and Hinds as the wry and spry grandparents. The film is produced by Branagh, Laura Berwick, Becca Kovacik and Tamar Thomas.

“Belfast is my most personal film. It’s about coming home – a dramatic journey of excitement, emotion and humour,” said Branagh.  “To be embraced by filmmakers and distributors of such proven imagination and talent as Focus is fantastic. We are honoured to partner with Peter Kujawski and his amazing team. With the incredible support of Northern Ireland Screen also in the mix, we are very excited for the future of Belfast in cinemas around the world in 2021”

Said Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski, “We are excited and grateful to collaborate with such an esteemed filmmaker and storyteller as Branagh. Highly personal and passionate, Belfast is a heartwarming piece that is bursting with life, and we look forward to sharing it with audiences worldwide

Behind the camera sees many regular Branagh collaborators including production designer Jim Clay, director of photography Haris Zambarloukos, hair and make-up artist Wakana Yoshihara, editor Una Ni Dhonghaile, costume designer Charlotte Walker and casting directors Lucy Bevan and Emily Brockman. Focus Features will distribute the film in the U.S. and Universal Pictures International will distribute internationally. 

Branagh is represented by WME, Berwick & Kovacik and Gochman Law Group.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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