‘I just cried’: film stirs memories on Belfast street Branagh left behind

Little remains of the street where Kenneth Branagh was raised.

It is the day after the Oscar nominations and Branagh has professed he is “dazed and delighted” and in a “beautiful state of shock” over the seven Oscar nominations his film Belfast has received.

A BBC radio crew goes house to house to inquire about the parties planned for Oscar night. But the pickings are thin. Most of Mountcollyer Street, including No 96 where Branagh grew up, was demolished 10 years ago. It’s pretty much a wasteland.

Buddleia competes with moss for the cracks in the street, and a so-called peace wall and 3-metre-high galvanised steel fencing stretching along both sides of the road suggest dereliction and years of neglect.