The Flats, directed by Alessandra Celesia, will make its theatrical release in Irish cinemas on Friday, May 23rd.
The Flats is a co-production between Ireland, France, Belgium and the UK, with Films de Force Majeure, Thank you & Good Night Productions, Dumbworld, and Ireland’s Planet Korda Pictures producing the film.
The Flats is set in New Lodge, a Catholic neighbourhood in the heart of Belfast violently affected by the conflict in Northern Ireland. Today it is marked by social abandonment, yet the inhabitants have a proud sense of belonging and idealism that can be found in their humanity and caustic humour. Once paramilitary foot soldiers as teenagers, the men’s lives are now undermined by disillusionment and unemployment, like Joe, tormented by restless nights and poor health. The women, however, as always, stay busy to keep the community afloat. They have had enough of the nostalgia for The Troubles.
The film has enjoyed a hugely success festival run winning awards at DOX:AWARD at CPH:DOX (Copenhagen); Best Irish Feature at Docs Ireland (Belfast); Best Documentary Feature at the London Irish Film Festival; Best Anthropological Film at Festival dei Popoli (Florence); Special Mention for Directing at Watch Docs (Warsaw); Jury Prize, Festival de Fill men Ville (Brussels); and Prix Cine+, FIPADOC (Biarritz). Earlier this year, it was awarded the George Morrison Award for Feature Documentary at the 2025 IFTA Film & Drama Awards.
During its journey, the project was selected at Doc Market (development) – Belfast Film Festival (2019 – Northern Ireland), Pitching du réel – Visions du Réel (2019 – Nyon, Switzerland), Doc Corner Prize, Film Market – Cannes Festival (2019 – France), HEAD Prize – Geneva post-production (2019 – Switzerland), Doc Market (postprod.) – Belfast film Festival (2023 – Northern Ireland).
The Flats is an exciting production adventure featuring a startling mix of documentary cinema, collective (re)creation, Irish dark humour, British realism, and Italian warmth. Alessandra and producer Jean-Laurent Csinidis (Films de Force Majeure) met in 2018 in Lussas, a French historical venue for independent documentary filmmakers. The Flats is now the second film they are releasing together, after The Mechanics of Things (2023).
The film takes place around the New Lodge apartment blocks, in the North of Belfast. Filmmaker Alessandra Celesia was born in Italy and lives between Paris and Belfast. “New Lodge is a visual experience because of the towers, the flats. They’re peculiar in Belfast because it’s really not a high-rise town. I started to make enquiries, and it turned out New Lodge was the area where my husband’s dad’s family was originally from. It was just a crazy coincidence that I was digging into family history without knowing,” Celesia says, when speaking about the origins of the film.
“I arrived in the North for the first time just before the Good Friday Agreement and I said I would never make a film about the Troubles. It’s the past, it’s finished, and now we’re looking for something else,” she continues. “And I kept my promise until I found New Lodge, where it’s just so clear there is this whole generation traumatized by this thing that they never got over. For any war, this is exactly what happens. Once you start it, there will always be a group left frozen in that time, for their whole life.”
The film was supported by Eurimages, Région Sud, Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government, Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée, Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, BFI Doc Society Fund, RTBF – Unité Documentaire and Magellan Films, UK Tax rebate, Northern Ireland Screen, Bourse Brouillon d’un rêve de la Scam.
Producer Jeremiah Cullinane adds: “We wanted the financing strategy to really match the purpose of the film, which is about healing the wounds left by history – and ultimately, reconciliation. This is why we have been so grateful that Screen Ireland, Northern Ireland Screen, and the British Film Institute all decided to support this film.
“We hope this film contributes to broadening the relevancy of films like The Flats, echoing the way Alessandra widened the framework of documentary filmmaking to tell a story of relevance to us all: that of collective trauma inflicted by history, and the way different generations can (and must!) go forward to write their common history together,” he adds.
