Kenneth Branagh, the five-time Oscar nominee who has a major Academy Award contender in the running this year with his semiautobiographical Belfast, will be honored at the Oscar Wilde Awards.
On March 24, three days before the Oscars — where he is a strong favorite to contend in the original screenplay, directing and best picture categories — Branagh will be feted in Santa Monica at Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams and Katie McGrath’s production company.
The event celebrates the work of those from Ireland — and some who are not — who contribute to film, television and music. Also being honored: Oscar-winning writer Adam McKay and Irish actor Dónall Ó Héalai. Irish musical acts Loah & Bantum and True Tides will perform.
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Born in Belfast on Dec. 10, 1960, Branagh left Northern Ireland with his working-class parents and older brother to move to England when he was 9 as violence erupted between loyalists and republicans in his country. His poignant Belfast, starring Caitriona Balfe, Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan, Ciaran Hinds and 10-year-old Jude Hill, tells the story of the lead-up to that escape.
“Ken’s Belfast is a beautifully written, semi-autobiographical screenplay that is a look at the city through the eyes of his 9-year-old self,” Trina Vargo, founder of the US-Ireland Alliance, which puts on the Oscar Wilde Awards, said in a statement.
“Set in 1969, it shows the idyllic joy of his childhood, overtaken by the violence that marked the beginning of what came to be known as the Troubles. The film also serves as a cautionary tale amidst the current uncertainties that Brexit has imposed upon the people of Northern Ireland, people who remember the Troubles and who want such violence left firmly in the past.”
Belfast, which arrived in U.S. theaters Nov. 12, won the People’s Choice Award for best film at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and this month collected 11 British Independent Film Award nominations.
Next year, Branagh will return as Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile, which he also directed; it’s his follow-up to his earlier Agatha Christie remake, Murder on the Orient Express (2017).
He also will be seen as U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the Sky Atlantic limited series This Sceptred Isle, directed by Michael Winterbottom and set during the first wave of the pandemic.
Last year, Branagh starred in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and helmed Artemis Fowl.
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and now its president, Branagh received a knighthood for his services to drama and the community in Northern Ireland in 2012. Six years later, Belfast granted him its Freedom of the City honor.
“I’m proud to say that you can take the boy out of Belfast, but you can’t take Belfast out of the boy,” he said then.
