Kneecap – Film Review - Fremantle Shipping News

I grew up in the South of Ireland during ‘The Troubles’ in the North, a time when it was compulsory to learn the Irish language, Gaeilge in primary and high school. So I attended the screening launch of Kneecap at Luna Cinemas, Leederville on Saturday 17 August with just a tad of apprehension – but what rollicking fun it turned out to be!

Kneecap is a powerful political comedy-drama film in the Irish language with English sub-titles. It tells the story of the rise of Belfast-based hip-hop trio, Kneecap who have been around since 2017. The film stars the three real-life Belfast rappers as themselves – this is their first acting gig, so it’s a biopic in a sense. Writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s raucous, rude and hilarious comedy highlights the survival of the Irish language and is filmed in Belfast as well.

The film premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in January, the first Irish language film to do so, where it won an award. Its Irish premiere was at the Galway Film Fleadh where it won Best Irish Film, the Audience Award and the Irish Language Feature Film Award. It’s arrived in Perth hot on the heels of the Sydney film Festival.

Two of the band members, Liam Óg hAnnaigh (stage name Mo Chara) and Naoise Ó Cairealláin (stage name Móglaí Bap), are part of the “ceasefire generation”, young people growing up in Northern Ireland after the 1994 Peace Process. They live in the small Gaeltacht Quarter of West Belfast. They learn to speak Irish from Naoise’s father, Arlo (Michael Fassbender). Arlo is a former republican paramilitary who fakes his own death and lives in hiding to avoid imprisonment. They are drug selling besties and staunch Irish speaking patriots and defy British imperialism.

Liam is arrested at a party full of drug users and refuses to speak English when questioned by the police. He meets JJ Ó Dochartaigh, a nerdy music teacher who acts as a translator. JJ encourages the lads to turn their notebook scribblings into rap songs. They name their band Kneecap and JJ becomes their anonymous DJ Próvaí, wearing a balaclava with the colours of the Irish flag to hide his identity from his school and partner. (Kneecapping was quite a thing during the troubles—a punitive torture technique where victims were shot in the knee.)

They record a track during an all-night, rowdy, drug-fueled session and begin performing in pubs. Their gigs are full of anti-social behavior, out spoken republicism, swearing and drug taking. In one hilarious scene they snort ketamine instead of cocaine and are unable to stand. JJ bears his bum with the words “Brits Out” written on them. Their music draws large crowds. Liam is in a relationship with a Protestant girl Georgia. The police follow and threaten them. Their recording studio (a garage) is bombed. JJ breaks into his school with the band to record a track. He is fired from his school and his girlfriend who is campaigning for an Irish Language Act in Northern Ireland, dumps him.

Kneecap’s music becomes ever more popular. Rapping in their native Irish, they lead a movement to save their mother tongue. Bursting with unruly energy that practically escapes the confines of the screen, Kneecap is a laugh-out-loud, drug-laced triumph in the name of freedom. The movie uses the legacy of cultural preservation, intergenerational trauma and ongoing hostilities between Catholics and Protestants in the North of Ireland to produce crowd-pleasing entertainment.

Although I’m not a rap or hip-hop fan, I enjoyed this freewheeling, finger-flipping, and thought-provoking music biopic – don’t miss it.

Rating – 8/10.

Kneecap opens at Luna Leederville on 29 August.

(By the by, since 2022, the Irish language, Gaeilge, is an official language in Northern Ireland. It is estimated that worldwide, one indigenous language dies every two weeks.)

By Jean Hudson

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