Childhood memories in movies tend to be lovely or traumatised. At first, Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast goes all-in on the former. The scene is black and white. In the backstreets of the Northern Irish capital, grinning kids play in front of terraced houses, a Shangri-La of cardboard swords and bin-lid shields. Parents enjoy the sun. But the date is specific: August 15 1969. Historians will tense. In real life, in that month sectarian riots erupted across the region. Shadowy figures duly loom. The camera jitters. Then that make-believe shield is called into defence against actual bricks.

In Belfast, sweetness and terror coexist. For Branagh, the story has personal meaning: his own parents left Northern Ireland for England after that summer’s escalation of the Troubles when he was nine. The awards-friendly black and white is just the most obvious reminder of another memoir, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma. But if Roma was High Cinema, Belfast is a slightly different film. Designed to straddle arthouse and multiplex, it is a movie about fear and loss made with a defiant zing. Take Buddy (Jude Hill), the boy hero who acts as proxy for the young Branagh — his chipper air might have come from a cereal ad.

Buddy is the darling of his unnamed family. They exist in their own fragile idyll — working-class Protestants on a Catholic street, with friends in both communities. In 1969, even that becomes impossible. The city fills with British troops and inter-denominational hatred. Yet within their own four walls, the family are rock solid. Played by cine-genic pair Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe, the boy’s parents refuse to give in to the violence. They are also still notably smitten. In a giddy set-piece, “Pa” sings “Everlasting Love” to “Ma” and means it. Less vocal but just as sturdy are his grandparents: Ciarán Hinds twinkling, Judi Dench a giant-hearted matriarch.