Written and directed by multiple Academy Award® nominee Kenneth Branagh, “Belfast” — winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival — is a poignant story of love, laughter, and loss in one boy’s childhood, amid the music and social tumult of the late 1960s. A semi-autobiographical look at Branagh’s youth in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, “Belfast” is shot in luminous black-and-white and prominently features music by the legendary Van Morrison, another native of Belfast, including eight classics and a new song written for the film. The stellar cast includes newcomer Jude Hill as Buddy, the film’s young protagonist, Jamie Dornan and Caitríona Balfe as his parents, and Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds as his grandparents. Branagh’s filmography ranges widely, including such disparate work as Marvel’s “Thor” and Disney’s “Cinderella,” and he’s best known for his exceptional Shakespeare adaptations — “Henry V” (1989), “Much Ado About Nothing” (1993), “Hamlet” (1996), “Love's Labour's Lost” (2000), and “As You Like It” (2006). “Belfast,” however, is surely the film closest to Branagh’s heart, and he calls it “a very personal movie about a place and people I love.” Variety writes: “Though the (Northern Ireland) conflict has been depicted to the point of exhaustion on-screen, ‘Belfast’ avoids many of the clichés in favor of a more personal look back, through a child’s eyes. The affectionate cine-memoir is rendered all the more effective on account of young discovery Jude Hill and its portrayal of a close-knit family (Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench as stay-put grandparents) crowded under one roof.”