Belfast's New Lodge comes to the big screen in The Flats

RTÉ News​

25-05-2025

"I'm very interested in watching how people that are very wounded can still stand, how they cope with life."
So says Italian director Alessandra Celesia about her award-winning Belfast documentary, The Flats.
Winner of the Best Documentary award at this year's Irish Film and Television Awards and also the top honour, the Dox:Award, at the CPH:DOX festival in Copenhagen in 2024, The Flats shares the lives and memories of the nationalist community of New Lodge. Mixing interviews, another-day-in-the-life footage, and reenactments, this is a special addition to Irish screen culture and is worth seeking out in cinemas if you want something different.
Watch: The trailer for The Flats
"I'm so proud of the fact that it's really Belfast. So Belfast," says Celesia as she salutes the locals who agreed to tell their stories. "I think they were brave. They were really brave."
Here, Celesia, who lives in Belfast and Paris, talks about bringing The Flats to fruition and the discoveries made along the way.
Harry Guerin: How long did it take to film The Flats?
Alessandra Celesia: The Flats was a very long process because I started to work on the project eight years ago. Obviously, we didn't film for so long, but it was really just going to New Lodge, stay there, spend a lot of time - nearly like an anthropologist - trying to really deeply understand the place. There are so many shades and many nuances that you need to get before you can even be allowed to film. It was a very long process of coming back and coming back and coming back. Then, the actual filming wasn't that long. We shot for eight weeks, but we had maybe two weeks' shooting and two weeks off in which the team wasn't there, but I was preparing the next two weeks' shooting.
What about finding the people who were willing to be on camera and earning their trust?
That's something that's always a bit miraculous. You always wonder how people can trust you that much to really share their deepest emotions on the screen. I think it's if you're very, very honest and if you go with very honest intentions. I think for them it's important to understand why you have decided to do it. For me, it's because my husband's family originally is from New Lodge, so it was a very close and loving look I had about the place. And then time spent with them (the interviewees) - I think the secret, it's really time, where you become nearly the wallpaper. They forget that you're from outside.
It's about shared intentions; everyone participates in a film like that for different reasons. I think for Joe (McNally, one of the stars of The Flats) it was to understand something about his past that I think probably it [he] was never really allowed to talk through. It's not something that people from the north of Ireland really speak about. Especially men. Somehow, I think he saw in this project a possibility to dig into the past himself. Everyone has, I think, a different 'why' for participating in a project like this. The trust, if you arrived and filmed immediately, you wouldn't get anything. You really just have to spend so much time with them and nearly create the film with them, in the sense that when you start shooting it's because you've been together wondering, 'What are we going to do? What are we going to say?'
What was the hardest thing to get right with the film?
It was really the consequences of a conflict; the long-term consequences and the trauma that is passed through generations. And how do you speak about that without going to touch things that are deeply unfortunately still there and that create a lot of controversy? How can you speak just about the personal aspect of having gone through trauma? I shot in a very republican area, but, of course, it could have been shot exactly the same in a very Protestant area. So, for me, the hardest thing was, 'Let the big history be behind but never invade our space. Let's try to stick with the very human aspect of the stories'.
With the re-enactments, some of the film is very uncomfortable to watch. I can't imagine what it was like actually being in the room as that was taking place.
I think when you work on a collaborative film like that there is a moment in which although it's painful, you know that there is something beautiful that's going to come out of it. You know there is some poetry that is going to be put on the pain that people express. So it is painful, but there is something deeply liberating as well. I think it was joyful in the end because every time we shot then we felt a little bit better. We felt, 'Oh, we're being closer to the truth or the memories'.
One thing I thought you showed brilliantly in the film is Belfast almost being like a snow globe - the sense that there's no world outside of Belfast.
Unfortunately, I think it's very common to a lot of deprived communities. Everywhere you go in an estate, people have a huge problem to see the outside world because they're so stuck in their own problems. They stick together; it has a very strong community that is... it's their strength, but it's nearly tribal. So it's a trap as well. I think doubly in Belfast because the history has made, 'You're on one side, you're on the other side'. And on that side, in your own community, you're someone. The minute you step out, there's nothing left, especially for people who sort of believe in ideals [and] had a moment where these ideals weren't their 'right fight', and then you're left without that. I agree with you, there is something extremely tribal, but it's also their strength. It's also what keeps them alive. I think what I'm happy [about] with the film is that it has been a very community-based film in a way. The community really came together because they thought, 'Oh, there is an opportunity to help someone, in this case Joe, to dig into his memories. Let's do it'.
How many hours of footage did you have?
That's terrible - I think I had 120 hours! So much - and so many beautiful things as well. It was really, really hard in the editing to let things go. I did it with a Belgian editor (Frédéric Fichefet), and thank God, he was very strong, and he helped me to deal with the loss of beautiful scenes. And then it was difficult to trace, 'What is the story now?' We realised it was this thread of violence that went from the men to the women because, as you see in the second part of the film, you see more of the violence that happened against the women as a result of the main violence going on. So, there is a transformation in the film, and I think at a certain point we realised that.
What did learn about yourself as a filmmaker making The Flats?
I learned a lot of patience! I didn't think I was patient. I must admit that it was very difficult to pull it together. I mean, the people are fantastic, but it's a process they don't know. So I had to be patient to give them the time to be involved at the right time. But also, what I learned, I think, for me, it was to deeply understand the society where I was brought to live. I'm an outsider. I'm not from there and I will never be really from there. But the privilege of being able to make this film allowed me to get a glimpse of what it is and have a deeper understanding of even our (my) family history. One day, Joe, the main character, said [to me], 'Oh, when are you coming home?' That's really a sentence that's really strong for them... and I was like, 'Oh, maybe I earned a little bit the fact that it is home after 27 years!'
The Flats is in selected cinemas now.