This haunting docu-drama explores Belfast’s New Lodge through trauma, memory, and resilience, blending archival footage with staged scenes for a powerful impact.
Northern Ireland remains vulnerable to exploitation by corporate interests and governmental neglect which sacrifices public health and environmental integrity for financial gain.
Baltimore highlights the contrast between the personal and political during the Irish conflict, but opportunities to understand the roots of radicalisation are limited.
This recently uncovered 1970s film sparks discussion about the capacity of such material to be commissioned and for it to be produced, but then to vanish.
It would seem that we are entering a new chapter in which Northern Ireland’s grisly past will be further regurgitated, and probably without tangible outcomes.
Although the international order in which it was created has changed, the Agreement can still be a blueprint for peace processes in other parts of the world.
It is a credit to Branagh’s mastery of memory, empathy and incantation that his film portrays so accurately that conflict begins and ends around the home.
Northern Ireland is ready to talk about the previously unspeakable tragedies which eventually birthed the territory’s painful but, nevertheless, sacred peace.
Northern Ireland must find a way to re-purpose but not to sanitize a heritage which fascinates outsiders, provides learning, and contains resonance for other peace processes.
The ultimate casualty of Brexit, witnessed so vividly in Northern Ireland, is the breakdown of community relations and the reinforcement of identity barriers, and thus segregation.
