This is the story of teenage girls Mairéad Mc Ilkenny and Christine Savage, growing up in post-war Belfast. Two strong, young women with their everyday life struggles, living as in different worlds in the same city, cut off from each other by many high walls.
Mairéad is 20 years old and has grown up in a Catholic enclave.
She stands looking out over her home, seeing all the walls around her. Childhood memories of brutal arrests of her father at night and a constant fear for her life mix with wonderings what the 'other side' looks like. She has never gotten to know a Protestant in her entire life - until the day her flatmate starts a new relationship. Suddenly 'the other side' has moved into her house.
Christine is Protestant and walks on the other side of the walls with her pram and young daughter. She is 18 years old and wishes most of all that her baby will have more choices when she grows up.
Christine dreams about a house of her own and a boy to love. When she finally finds him - he's a Catholic.
Swedish director Malin Andersson follows the lives of these young women. Barbed wire and sandbags from the early days of the war in Northern Ireland have long since become permanent walls. The 'peacewalls' keep the two communities apart creating divisions as brutal as ever, nearly a decade into the peace process. The legacy to the young generation is clear. You don't mix.
Belfast Girls is a film about two girls courage to do things their own way and about the strength that comes from love.
|
 |
|
