• 1 Jack Thorne, Stephen Graham, Adolescence, Netflix, 2025.
• 2 Ian Youngs, “Adolescence Hard to Watch as a Dad, Starmer Tells Creators”, 31 March 2025, BBC News O (...)
• 3 Ibid.
• 4 See debate on the topic: Ivan Herrera-Peco, Invención Fernández-Quijano, Carlos Ruiz-Núñez, “The Ro (...)

1In 2025, the British mini-series Adolescence1 raised awareness on the vulnerable mental health of young people caused by a number of socio-economic factors, among which the lack of care and attention paid by adults within the family unit and at school stands out. The series poignantly captures the emotional distress of the thirteen-year-old protagonist that he violently externalises by murdering a girl from his class. Much of the debate surrounding the success of the Netflix drama focused on the negative role of social media in fostering toxic masculinity among young people – prompting the prime minister Keir Starmer to encourage its screening in schools as material for relationships, sex and health education (RSHE).2 However Starmer’s unease after watching the programme (“we’ve been watching with our children – my boy is 16, my girl is 14 – and I have to say, I found it really hard”3) may well be explained by the feeling of helplessness of adults towards a new generation they do not understand, but mainly because Adolescence reveals how young people are being neglected by society. This disquieting feeling has been reinforced since the Covid-19 pandemic that drew attention on young people’s mental health which in turn sparked a wave of initiatives, including on social media,4 to tackle the issue. Despite warnings by researchers and health practitioners about the rising mental ill-health among the young population, a TV series as an art form seems more efficient in mobilising public opinion and public policy because of its wide circulation and cathartic role.

• 6 “NICCY Legislation”, NICCY website: https://www.niccy.org/about-niccy/our-organisation/niccy-legisl (...)
• 7 Bamford Review of Mental Health and Learning Disability (Northern Ireland), Mental Health Improveme (...)
• 8 Department of Health, Mental Health Strategy 2021-2031, 2021, online: https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/ (...)

3In 2003, the Northern Ireland Commission for Children and Young People (NICCY) was set up “to safeguard and promote the rights and best interests of children and young persons”6 and a review of mental health service provisions was undertaken in 2002 to address the pressing needs of the population (Bamford Review7) followed by a government’s strategy, the Mental Health Strategy 2021-2031,8 whose implementation has yet to yield results. Understaffing and underfunding of those services coupled with the political and institutional instability in Northern Ireland led various investigating committees to conclude in 2024 and 2025:

• 11 Louis Aragon, Le mentir-vrai, Paris, Gallimard (Folio), 1997.

4Despite new research carried out over the last decade on young people’s mental health in post-conflict Northern Ireland, issues concerning the methodology used in the research and debates on the definition of mental health seem to provide a piecemeal vision of the problem that its representation in art forms may alleviate. As French novelist Louis Aragon pointed out in Le mentir-vrai,11 literature can be revealing of the truest facts of reality. Historian Ivan Jablonka also called for a dialogue between literature and the social sciences:

• 13 The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is a self-assessment tool that measures people’s well-being.
• 14 See Equality and Inequalities in Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland: A Statistical Overview(...)
• 15 Victims of the conflict found support only within a limited circle. In the 1980s general practition (...)
• 16 Orla T. Muldoon, Karen Trew, Rosemary Fitzpatrick, “The Legacy of the Troubles on Young People’s Ps (...)

5In the aftermath of the Belfast Agreement in 1998, researchers focused their attention on the “human cost” of the conflict and were at a loss to provide a clear picture of the population’s mental health. Such an endeavour still poses many challenges as most of the studies which date back as early as the 1970s have focused on a variety of incomparable events, groups of population, periods and locations and have used different methodologies ranging from clinical assessment by psychiatrists to community-based studies carried out with questionnaires13 and open-ended interviews.14 Qualitative and quantitative research should also be construed with the timing of studies themselves. Most of the psychological effects of the conflict have tended to develop in its aftermath as no satisfactory support for victims was available at the time15 and as the population in general was trying to adjust to an abnormal situation in a survival mode.16 Hence the delayed symptoms being more prevalent in the post-conflict period.

• 17 Orla T. Muldoon, “Children of the Troubles: The Impact of Political Violence in Northern Ireland”, (...)
• 18 Orla T. Muldoon, Karen Trew, Rosemary Fitzpatrick, “The Legacy of the Troubles…”.
• 19 Ibid.

6The same conclusions can be drawn from studies carried out on children and young people who came under the spotlight of the press and psychologists after the Northern Ireland branch of British Psychological Society organised a conference on the subject in September 1978.17 In 2000, Orla T. Muldoon, Karen Trew and Rosemary Fitzpatrick18 synthetised the studies carried out since the onset of the conflict and pointed to the contradictory results they provided. While researchers in the 1970s emphasised the serious and prolonged effects of the conflict on young people’s mental health, studies in the 1980s insisted on their ability to cope with and adapt to a violent environment, an optimistic view that was questioned after 2000. The lack of consensus on this issue is largely due to a lack of comprehensive data based on similar methodologies. Moreover, young people have experienced direct and acute or indirect forms of physical or structural violence whose consequences on their mental health vary according to their age, gender, social class and identity (political or religious), and according to beliefs and attitudes developed within their family unit or communities, and finally to their levels of economic deprivation.19

• 20 Marie Smyth, Marie-Therese Fay, Emily Brough, Jennifer Hamilton, The Impact of Political Conflict o (...)

7The study20 carried out by the Community Conflict Impact on Children (CCIC), a project established in 1999, provides a clear picture of young people’s experience of the conflict as it is based on ninety-eight interviews and focus groups in the early days of the post-Agreement period when people were ready and prone to express themselves. The CCIC is part of a wider project called the Cost of the Troubles Study (COTTS) established in 1996 and composed of academics and members of the civil society. The COTTS started to investigate the death toll and the legacy of the conflict in its aftermath, using a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies; it has been regarded as an invaluable research project by institutions and the persons concerned by their output.

• 21 Marie Smyth, Mark Scott, The YouthQuest 2000 Survey, Belfast, CCIC, 2000, online: https://conflictr (...)
• 22 Marie Smyth, Cost of the Troubles Study, Half the Battle: Understanding the Effects of the Troubles (...)
• 23 Joy Dyer, Sunningdale Youth Group, COTTS, Do You See What I See: Young People’s Experience of the T (...)

8The CCIC study was published in 2004 and was preceded by another titled The YouthQuest 2000 Survey (2000)21 and an earlier study entitled Half the Battle: Understanding the Effects of the Troubles on Children and Young People in Northern Ireland (1998)22 as well as a book of photographs and testimonies by young people themselves.23 Interestingly the findings of the study based on interviews with young children from areas that were more affected by the conflict reveal a discrepancy between the highly-visible experiences and consequences reported in the media and those more prevalent but receiving less interest, which accounts for the misrepresentation of young people in general. Rather than being severely traumatised, the young developed

• 25 Ibid., p. 97.

9While public attention is directed towards the punishment of attacks or joyriding, young people express concern about their relationship with the police and being attacked on their way home from school.25

• 26 Ibid., p. 101.
• 27 Ibid., p. 105-109.

10The study shows that most young people understand that the legacy of violence explains the sectarian divide between the two communities and they wish antagonisms could be overcome. Both girls and boys favour peaceful solutions for the future and are aware that they have inherited attitudes and beliefs from the previous generation. However, boys are more likely to be exposed to violence and are in turn more involved in violent behaviour, while girls tend to be witnesses of the violence.26 Within their family unit, young people reported that issues related to the conflict were not discussed and that their parents’ lost childhood had a negative impact on their own. The prevailing silence about the past was also a feature of their experience at school.27

• 28 Dirk Schubotz, Elizabeth McArdle, “Young People and Mental Health: Policy and Research Review”, Acc (...)
• 29 Amit Anand, “The Mental Health of Young People in Northern Ireland”, Access Research Knowledge, Pol (...)
• 30 Colm Walsh, Ann-Marie Gray, “The Trauma of Violence and Its Impact on Young People in Northern Irel (...)
• 31 Dirk Schubotz, Elizabeth McArdle, “Young People and Mental Health…”.

11Subsequent research based on the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and carried out a decade later seem to confirm those trends. Dirk Schubotz and Elizabeth McArdle indicated that 18% of people aged 16-24 had mental health problems28 while Amit Anand points out to the high rates of anxiety and depression (25% higher than in the rest of the United Kingdom).29 These mental disorders could be linked to transgenerational legacies of the conflict. However, the relation between being exposed to and perpetrating violent acts is questioned by Colm Walsh and Ann-Marie Gray,30 who also indicate the lack of research on the links between trauma and violence. According to them, data is too sparse to be able to draw conclusions, while Schubotz and McArdle question the definition of mental health and would rather concentrate on people’s ability to function socially, or on their emotional well-being.31 Nonetheless these studies highlight issues of self-harm, suicide ideation, poor school achievement, increased substance abuse, and the role of the paramilitaries in sustaining violence.

• 32 See https://www.seupb.eu/current-programmes/peace-iv.
• 33 Siobhan O’Neill et al., Towards a Better Future: The Trans-Generational Impact of the Troubles on M (...)
• 34 Emily Fitzgerald, Mark Given, Maighread Gough, Linzi Kelso, Victoria McIlwaine, Chloe Miskelly, The (...)
• 35 Siobhan McAlister, Mary-Louise Corr, Clare Dwyer, Orla Drummond, Montserratt Fargas-Malet, “It didn (...)
• 36 Siobhan O’Neill et al., Towards a Better Future…, p. 8.
• 37 Emily Fitzgerald et al., The Transgenerational Impact of “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland, p. 4-1 (...)

12The European peace programme PEACE IV (2014-2020)32 was instrumental in fostering and funding research on children and young people as part of its four key priority areas. Most of the research was carried out by Queen’s University Belfast or the University of Ulster, for the Commission for Victims and Survivors. Towards a Better Future (2015),33 The Transgenerational Impact of “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland (2018)34 and “It didn’t end in 1998” (2021)35 provide in-depth investigations on the transgenerational legacy of the conflict that not only tackle issues of psychological trauma but examine other socio-economic factors with various methodological approaches and theories. They confirm that while the population was not evenly exposed to the conflict and while 71.5% of people were able to cope, there remains a significative 28.5% of the population whose mental health has been affected directly by the Troubles.36 It is estimated that 60% of adults with mental problems due to the conflict have not received support, with potential transmission to the young generation, which in turn could jeopardise a long-lasting peace. The three studies highlight that violence, sectarianism and racism are still prevalent in the post-Agreement period.37

• 38 Fabrice Mourlon, “Bones of Contention: Dealing with the Past and the NI Troubles (Legacy and Reconc (...)
• 39 Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 (c. 41).

14The issue of learning about what happened during the conflict follows a similar pattern at both societal and family level. Twenty-seven years after the signing of the Belfast Agreement, no consensus has been found within the population or among political parties to design a global mechanism to deal with the past, despite a series of consultations.38 The 2023 Legacy Act39 passed by Westminster was attacked by all political parties and victims’ groups in Northern Ireland and its implementation is being challenged at the time of writing.

• 40 See also John Bell, Ulf Hansson, Nick McCaffery, “The Troubles aren’t history yet”: Young People’s (...)
• 41 In community relations theories, single identity activities, as opposed to cross-community activiti (...)
• 42 Ann Marie Gray, Jennifer Hamilton, Gareth Hetherington, Grainne Kelly, Brendan Lynn, Paula Devine, (...)

15Post-conflict Northern Ireland has been torn between forgetting and working through the past. However, young people have considerable knowledge of the Troubles especially through family accounts and are able to talk about sensitive issues. Apart from families in which parents prefer not to talk about the conflict, young people are either exposed to conversations between adults that they overhear or to overt detailed stories told by their parents and grandparents. These accounts shared within families or in the communities and on social media can of course potentially glorify and embellish a troubled past. In schools, the history of the Troubles is rarely taught by teachers who still find it difficult to openly talk about it.40 Thus, the family unit remains the locus of transmission about what happened during the conflict, just like identity and culture. Young people feel that their identity is “imposed on them” by their own community or by peer pressure which reinforces mistrust towards the “other” community that they see as antagonistic and frightening. Living in a segregated environment also pushes them to engage in “single identity” activities41 (sports, culture) with limited contact with the “adverse” community. However, the studies highlighted that young people were prone to interact in neutral venues. But the presence of paramilitary groups and the control they exert on their community is still perceived as a threat and reinforces a feeling of insecurity as intimidation, abuse and political influence by these groups still exist.42 Young people feel that living in such an environment creates a culture of violence.

• 44 Anna Burns, No Bones, London, Flamingo, 2002; Anna Burns, Little Constructions, London, Fourth Esta (...)
• 45 Jan Carson, The Fire Starters, London – Dublin, Doubleday, 2019; Jan Carson, The Raptures, London, (...)

17The transgenerational legacies of the conflict devolved to young people have not only been a concern of research aimed at improving mental health government policies, but have also been sublimated in art forms, which provide a more direct access to these issues to a wider audience through style and emotions. For instance, Anna Burns’s novels No Bones, Little Constructions or Milkman44 vividly express trauma in a distorted and broken style, while Jan Carson’s novels The Fire Starters and The Raptures deal with the issue of transmission between generations.45 As mentioned in the introduction, these art forms can be considered as other source materials to investigate a particular subject, as historian Jablonka hinted. The novel and the documentary analysed hereafter combine both the socio-economic and psychological legacies of the conflict, focusing unevenly on either aspect, and trying to work cathartically through them.

• 46 Michael Magee, Close to Home, London, Penguin, 2023. See also the following reviews: Keiran Goddard (...)

18Michael Magee’s debut novel Close to Home46 explores the disenchanted and drifting lives of young people in post-Agreement Belfast through Sean Maguire the narrator who, as Magee’s alter ego, finds it difficult to get a job because of the economic crisis, after he graduated from Liverpool University. Magee himself grew up in West Belfast and his novel was written from his own experience as part of a PhD in creative writing. Sean’s life and Magee’s writing process are intertwined as the incipit and excipit suggest. The first sentence “There was nothing to it” is short and sharp. Although immediately referring to Sean’s punching another man at a posh party, its meaning could also apply to the humbleness of their writing process and it could warn the reader against taking the story too seriously – a modest attitude commonly attributed to people in Belfast. A mise en abyme of Magee’s own writing process is manifest when Sean’s mother reveals to his brother Anthony, eliciting pride in everyone:

• 48 Ibid., p. 278.

The multiple focalisations blur the line between Sean’s and Magee’s own writing and narration, which subtly, through short sentences mixed with irony and curse words and dialogues full of banter, uncover their feeling of estrangement due to the traumatic moments of their families’ pasts and because they will both become class defectors. In the excipit, Sean, who studies at Queen’s, reads the first line of Milan Kundera’s first novel, The Joke – “So here I was, home again after all those years”48 –, that corresponds to the narrator’s and the writer’s coming to terms with their past.

• 49 Didier Eribon, Retour à Reims [2009], Paris, Flammarion (Champs. Essais), 2025.
• 50 Michael Magee, Close to Home, p. 234.

19Close to Home follows in the footsteps of Didier Eribon’s Retour à Reims49 that exposes the process of class defecting. After watching the film La haine at the university cinema Queen’s Film Theatre (QFT), Sean realises he can be part of this new world: “It sounds stupid, but I was proud of myself. I had crossed some threshold”.50 Magee wrote a piece in a book edited by novelist Paul McVeigh who gathered a number of testimonies of “Working-Class Voices” in contemporary literature. Magee explained:

• 52 Michael Magee, Close to Home, p. 77.

Sean, in turn, is introduced to this new world by his girlfriend Mairéad and initially finds it hard to adapt. When they find themselves on the train stopping at Holywood (a wealthy suburb of Belfast), “[They] may as well have got off the train in a different country […] staring around like what the fuck are [they] doing here”.52 Later, at an art exhibition, the feeling of not belonging to the “cultural elite” is obvious:

• 54 Ibid., p. 40.

20The harshness of the capitalist system explains the behaviour of the disenchanted youth faced with poverty and lack of job opportunities: “There was a crowd of lads with their tops off standing around an Astra at the bottom of Summerhill Drive. They were on the beer already […]. You couldn’t walk ten yards without one of them running up beside you and asking for money”.54 Job precariousness prevails and the staff at the bar where Sean works is ruthlessly treated and easily laid off. A conversation between Sean and his two best friends Finty and Ryan also criticise the capitalistic jungle:

• 56 Ibid., p. 90.

The three friends are very critical of the violent years of the conflict which they think has been waged for a useless cause. Their legacy defines most of the character’s behaviour and relationships with others. Ryan’s father who spent seven years in prison because he was a member of the IRA is left totally traumatised: “Does he talk about it? I said. / Does he fuck. He locks himself in the bathroom and cries”.56 According to them, the Good Friday Agreement was a sell-out:

• 58 Ibid., p. 90.

They are disillusioned with politics: “They can shove their United Ireland up their hole, Ryan said”.58 The wasted years of the conflict have an impact on both the old and young generations. As a coping mechanism, Sean and his friends spend their nights taking all sorts of drugs and their parents are heavy drinkers. As a result of the conflict, relationships between them are strained and masculinities are often expressed through violence. These aspects are explored in the novel as Magee subtly makes the past reemerge at various stages of the narration in small episodes.

• 59 Ibid., p. 183.
• 60 Ibid., p. 189.
• 61 Ibid., p. 222.

21Sean keeps asking his mother about what happened in their family during the Troubles but transgenerational transmission is incomplete and faltering: “Sean knows this, don’t you, son? I’ve told him all this before”;59 “What do you wanna know about that for? she said. / Dunno. You’ve never really talked about it so”;60 “There’s a lot you don’t know, son, she said”.61 Also, Sean is desperately looking for his father who left his household after being chased out by the IRA and is now remarried with a child. The investigation is never totally discussed in the open in the family and unfolds with allusions to a family secret about sexual abuse that is finally uncovered but never clearly explained:

• 63 Ibid., p. 241.

Anthony’s drinking and violent behaviour is mainly caused by this event and he develops both a protective and aggressive relationship with Sean. Feelings between men are difficult to express, and Anthony either calls Sean “gay” when tenderness is on the brink of being shown or is overprotective: “I’m still going to love you to death. […] I’ve always been more of a da than a brother”.63 At the end of the novel, when the past has been worked through in the family, Anthony tells Sean:

• 65 Ibid., p. 182-183, 189-192.

Finally, in the novel, dealing with the past and class issues is a gendered process characterised by passing on violence or repressing feelings among men while women, Sean’s mother and Mairéad, are emancipating agents as they help Sean overcome the toxic legacies of the conflict. Conversations with the mother enable the unravelling of the family’s or Northern Ireland’s past as she explains for instance the role of women in the IRA as suppletive or active agents65 and the hardship of raising a family on their own – often-overlooked aspects of the conflict.

• 68 See Elisa Helal-Brenner’s unpublished PhD thesis: Histoire et mémoire, le rôle des républicaines da (...)

These scenes capture the mixed feelings ex-combatant women experience in post-conflict Northern Ireland as they shy away from openly talk about their past activities. Today very few of them accept to be interviewed or write their memoirs, contrary to some of their male counterparts.68

• 69 Alessandra Celesia, The Flats, France, Belgium, Ireland, United Kingdom, 2024, 114 mins.

24Alessandra Celesia’s The Flats69 is a documentary that follows Joe as he gradually remembers his traumatic past related to the conflict. It is set in the council flats of New Lodge, a Catholic and Republican area of Belfast that was most affected by political violence. Through Joe’s experience, the delayed impact of the Troubles on the population post-Agreement is vividly captured.

• 70 Fabrice Mourlon, L’urgence de dire: l’Irlande du Nord après le conflit, Oxford, P. Lang, 2018.
• 71 Alessandra Celesia, The Flats, 15:19.
• 72 Ibid., 24:06.
• 73 See Mike Morrissey, Marie Smyth, Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement…
• 74 Alessandra Celesia, The Flats, 04:44.

25The first twenty-four minutes of the film show Joe talking about the death of his favourite uncle Cocke who was shot on 2 October 1975 by the Shankill Butchers, an infamous group of Ulster Volunteer Force men who committed a series of sectarian murders within the Catholic community – victims were targeted only because of their religion. The remembering process occurs during a counselling session with Rita, which is alternately interrupted by scenes that portray the preparation and the re-enactment of his uncle’s wake. A coffin is placed into a messy spare room of his flat. The mess in the room echoes the mess in his mind, the house being the mirror of mental health in psychology. The body of a living young man resembling Bobby Sands is placed within the coffin and the wake is re-enacted with Jolene (a young woman), Angie (a mature woman) and Sean (a young boy), three fellow residents of the flats playing the part of Joe’s family in 1975. Thus fiction and reality are blurred and the past meets the present to highlight the vividness of the trauma being unlocked twenty-five years after the signing of the Belfast Agreement. The therapy session reminds us of the testimonies that many survivors gave after 1998.70 Joe’s narration is factual and focused on minute details of the event, which is characteristic of testimonial practices – here Joe remembers the plaster that was stuck under his uncle’s eye to hide the bullet wound. Expressing his loss is very difficult until he melts down and admits he blames himself71 for what happened to his uncle and realises he has repressed his feelings since 1975 and cannot be helped.72 Rita, the counsellor, shows him that he bears the psychological consequences of that event in the present and reminds him that post-conflict Northern Ireland suffers from high rates of alcoholism, suicide and drug abuse. Joe realises that he was not able to grieve properly at the time because there was nobody to turn to and drinking his homemade alcohol helps him to cope. The same happened to his friends and at no time were they able to discuss those issues.73 As a republican, he is obsessed with the figure of Bobby Sands and opens the therapy session with his famous quote: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”.74 His republican cause now consists of a better future for the new generation.

• 75 Ibid., 25:56.

26The following scene75 shows women from different generations cheerfully gathered on a lawn near their estate in a sort of therapy session in which they have to express what they would like to get rid of in their lives and what they hope for in the future. The themes range from stopping smoking to getting rid of drugs (in their families) and stopping arguing with their husbands. Although cheerful, they talk about the harsh reality of their lives in a deprived area. Jolene, the young woman, speaks about the hurt and the pain she endures (her sister is left totally disabled after taking drugs) but is able to sublimate her feelings by composing songs.

• 76 Ibid., 1:00:56.

27These two initial sequences set the tone for the whole documentary which is built and structured on the remembering and therapeutic processes. Joe’s therapy becomes Northern Ireland’s therapy. Rita helps him through his past that reveals “snapshots”76 of his broken memories due to the various unprocessed emotional shocks. The personal loss of his uncle and the hunger strikes that acquired a community meaning are verbally expressed by the characters of the documentary, who in turn become actors playing the parts of persons from Joe’s family. The personal and historical events (Bobby Sands and the hunger strikes) are also narrated through TV footage that acts as a third medium to provide various points of view. As a result, reality and fiction intertwine, revealing the fragmented process of working through trauma. Joe’s neighbours re-enacting scenes from his past enables him to overcome his hurt, but also helps them in turn to regain agency in their lives. The distance they thus acquire enables the elaboration of what happened.

• 77 Ibid., 1:27:25.
• 78 Ibid., 1:30:25.

28The documentary deals with other societal issues such as identity, domestic violence, drugs, and poverty, all being legacies of the conflict. Jolene, the young woman, and Angie, the more mature one, gradually evoke the violence of their husbands. Angie who never spoke about it before77 reveals she shot her husband after years of abuse with an IRA gun hidden at their flat. She then tells Jolene that the IRA decided in the end not to kill her because of the hunger strikes. Jolene also tells her experience as a victim of domestic violence: the bruises, their hiding with makeup. In the following scene,78 she uses the old gun to shoot in the air, performing a “therapeutic” act.

• 79 Ibid., 1:36:13.

29Most of the old generation in The Flats show some nostalgia for their past. The republican cause and their Irish identity are still vivid. Jolene on the contrary questions this tradition in a scene where they are watching the Queen’s funeral on TV. Angie’s friend tells Jolene about the history of Northern Ireland through a nationalist perspective and discusses the fact that they can have both British and Irish passports. Jolene is confused. This reveals how the old generation has been unable to pass what happened during the conflict onto the new generation who is concerned with everyday life issues rather than politics. Later in the scene, after Angie refuses to listen to God Save the Queen on the TV footage of the funeral, Jolene explains that “It’s only music”79 thus questioning and debunking identity politics that the old generation is still supporting.

• 80 Ibid., 1:37:06.
• 81 Ibid., 1:06:19.

30Drugs are part of the everyday lives of The Flats. Joe makes bootleg alcohol and smokes marijuana to cope with his feelings, but paradoxically finds a new cause in fighting against drugs dealers that he regularly tells off from the top of his building and goes on hunger strike acting out what Bobby Sands had done before him.80 During the night he lies in the coffin he had bought reliving himself the deaths in his family and that of Bobby Sands – both a personal and community process. A family scene also shows Jolene and her mother – her hoarse and tired voice is due to too much alcohol and chain smoking – looking after Coleen, Jolene’s sister, who is left in a state of quasi-coma after taking drugs three years and a half before.81 Thus, the documentary highlights that drugs as a means of coping emotionally but also financially are a pervasive element of deprived areas like New Lodge that still suffer from the aftermath of the conflict. Moreover, it shows how interface areas still feature parts of Belfast, where barriers and gates are part of the everyday life of divided communities.

• 82 Ibid., 1:49:25.
• 83 Michael Magee, Close to Home, p. 148.

31The redemptive end of the documentary alternates between two scenes. After Rita convinced him that being on hunger strike is useless, Joe takes Sean, his alter ego, to the caravan that his mother had bought with the compensation money the family had received after his uncle’s death. It is a place of respite and, as he goes fishing with Sean, his anger and trauma are overcome and he can now pass on a better future to the young generation. In the other scene, Jolene sings in a pub one of her songs82 whose lyrics are “just the way we are” revealing that despite their hardships, people have a strong sense of belonging to their home place – an ambivalent feeling that is also present in Magee’s novel.83

• 84 Rich Peppiatt, Kneecap, Ireland, United Kingdom, 2024, 105 mins.

32Using both factual data from academic research and art forms, this paper aimed at assessing the transgenerational effect of the conflict in Northern Ireland after the Belfast Agreement. Magee’s novel and Celesia’s documentary are construed not only as case studies but reveal how pervasive and prevalent the legacy of the Troubles is in the Northern Ireland’s psyche as it is sublimated in art forms. By providing a vivid access to the issues that concern the young generation, they shed light on how their everyday life preoccupations can differ from their elders’ despite being impacted by the conflict. Even in the most affected areas of Belfast, young people are gradually drifting away from past political agendas and wish for a better future that would allow for more socio-economic mobility. This could be a sign that Northern Ireland society is gradually being “normalised”. The film Kneecap,84 a biopic based on the hip hop band from Belfast, promotes a new form of Irish cultural nationalism that values the Irish language and rejects all forms of political agendas developed during the conflict. Former identities and politics are criticised and rejected in a subversive and disruptive style to give way to more socio-economic issues. However, mental ill-health among young people is still a critical issue in post-conflict Northern Ireland as working through the past both at individual and collective levels is still unresolved.