I Am Belfast

Cousins offers perhaps his most eccentric docu-essay yet, an impressionistic portrait of his home town, with Helena Bereen playing a regal personification of the spirit of place.

Cousins doesn't ignore the bloodshed and sectarian violence (the pub bombings, the killings, the evictions) in the city's recent past but he also has a genius for finding the poetry and humour in everyday street scenes.

The city would not be itself without its humorous fatalism. We're all going to die. All films on Belfast end with Van Morrison.

At a time when filmmakers have been hesitant to engage with the difficult legacies of Belfast's past, Cousins provides a timely intervention while pointing to a future where all the city's inhabitants could take pride in the spaces... they inhabit.