Sir Kenneth Branagh on Why 'Belfast' is Filmed In Black-and-White

Kenneth Branagh's newest film Belfast is presented almost entirely in black-and-white, with moments of color bursting onto the screen sporadically.

Set in Northern Ireland during the 1960s, the film tells the story of a family through the eyes of young boy Buddy (played by Jude Hill).

It follows Buddy as he navigates life in his small town with the help of his Ma (Caitriona Balfe), Pa (Jamie Dornan), Granny (Dame Judi Dench) and Pop (Ciaran Hinds).

But Buddy's childhood is turned on its head when The Troubles begin in the region, which was a conflict between nationalists and unionists in the country that lasted almost thee decades.

Branagh, who directed the film and took inspiration from his own life for the story, told Newsweek that he wanted to have the film be in monochrome so that viewers weren't "distracted" from the story at hand.

Why is Belfast filmed in black-and-white?

Of the creative decision, he said: "Black-and-white feels very forensic to me, it feels like you can really get inside people, you're not distracted by color. We wanted to feel these people, we wanted to not just describe them.

"Belfast is a city under the northern skies—it often rains, the monochrome is the tonal range I associate with it in a way, peppered by brilliant bursts of color."

Going on to reflect on how his childhood influenced the look and feel of the film, he went on: "In my youth those bursts of colour were in the movies, they were in big wide-screen entertainments that were saturated with technicolour.

"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sound of Music, The Great Escape—big ensemble pieces that had big landscapes and made you feel you were really journeying away from your very, very grey, much more urban landscape, and that explosion of colour was what was happening to my imagination.

"That stories could be told on that scale in those places, for me it literally blew my mind and it was such a strong contrast to the way I saw the life in front of me, which was a much more graphic thing, dominated by black-and-white Westerns that I was watching on television.

"My wife [Lindsay Brunnock] always says I talk about life like it is a movie, or I refer to movies all the time, and I think I was even doing it back then."

Belfast is out in theaters now.