{"id":1005094,"date":"2026-08-16T20:29:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1005094\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T20:29:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:29:17","slug":"kenneth-branagh-on-harry-potter-and-speaking-russian-backwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1005094\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenneth Branagh on Harry Potter, and Speaking Russian Backwards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSunday at the Edinburgh Intl. Film Festival turned into Edinbranagh, with a morning screening of the four-hour epic \u201cHamlet\u201d followed by a wide-ranging onstage conversation with Kenneth Branagh<\/a>, which began with him receiving the inaugural EIFF Outstanding Contribution to Cinema award.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFestivals are more important to our industry than ever before,\u201d Branagh said, holding the award and arguing they offer a lifeline to films struggling to find a traditional theatrical path. He promptly turned the honor back on the packed audience: \u201cYou are the reason, certainly the reason why I stand here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHosted by Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, the talk jumped across Branagh\u2019s sprawling career.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe recalled preparing his 1991 thriller \u201cDead Again\u201d from Sydney Pollack\u2019s office when he felt the room move. Then Pollack\u2019s Academy Awards started sliding.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI started to see the two Oscars do a sort of dance on the top shelf,\u201d Branagh said. \u201cIt was an earthquake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDead Again,\u201d his neo-noir follow up to \u201cHenry V,\u201d had its own shaky beginnings. Early previews were \u201cdisastrous,\u201d with audiences heading for the exits. The fix? Restore screenwriter Scott Frank\u2019s original idea of rendering the past in black and white. \u201cSuddenly the preview score went through the roof,\u201d Branagh said. \u201cWe were loved again by our studio family.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChristopher Nolan offered a different kind of ordeal. On \u201cTenet,\u201d Branagh asked whether his Russian oligarch should speak Russian backwards while moving backwards through time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI saw this terrible, dangerous light in his eye,\u201d he recalled. Nolan\u2019s answer: \u201cYes, I think you would.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo Branagh spent lunch learning backwards Russian.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen came Hogwarts.<\/p>\n

\n\tBranagh had assumed Gilderoy Lockhart in \u201cHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\u201d might mean three or four weeks\u2019 work. Instead, \u201cI was on it for nine months.\u201d The crew list, he said, was \u201cthe size of a telephone directory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn his first day, Branagh thought he saw Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, only to discover stunt doubles and stand-ins filling an entire classroom while the young stars were at school. When the real actors appeared, Hogwarts had become its own ecosystem: \u201cNotes were being passed. Little darts were being thrown at people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Branagh, the scale was staggering, children essentially living inside a fictional school while surrounded by \u201cthe entire British film industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe conversation kept circling back to Shakespeare. Branagh said his early theater company had a \u201cmissionary zeal\u201d to make the plays feel immediate rather than bogged down by reverence. He wanted his parents to be able to watch Shakespeare \u201cand not feel they had to read the play beforehand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen Shakespeare was real, there was nothing in the way,\u201d he said. \u201cYou just had truth. If it was truthful, you felt it, you understood it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat instinct fuelled his directorial debut \u201cHenry V,\u201d made despite producer David Puttnam\u2019s late warning that the film could collapse and damage Branagh\u2019s career, a sentiment Puttnam later retracted in a gracious note of apology. Branagh said one of the most useful lessons he learned as a director could be summed up in three words: \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe afternoon\u2019s most personal moment came with \u201cBelfast.\u201d Written during the pandemic, the semi-autobiographical film emerged, Branagh said, after the story had sat inside him for roughly 40 years.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis sister\u2019s reaction to the script: \u201cMy God, for a very private man, you\u2019ve really put it all out there now, haven\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBranagh grew emotional.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was cathartic,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was necessary. Somehow it was necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter a career spanning Shakespeare, superheroes, Poirot, Hogwarts and Hollywood, his closing advice to an audience member was simple:<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cKeep practising and enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunday at the Edinburgh Intl. Film Festival turned into Edinbranagh, with a morning screening of the four-hour epic…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1005095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[88978,171,246292,53,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1005094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-edinburgh-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-kenneth-branagh","tag-movies","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117107082445672361","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1005095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}