Kneecap is a 2024 comedy-drama film depicting the rise of Belfast-based hip-hop trio, of the same name, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, but has only received a limited release since. Jason Overman, long-suffering Tube Rat and Future Radio DJ, explains why the film deserves to find a wider audience.
As a music fan I like to think I’m pretty open-minded, but everyone has their preferences. My preferences wouldn’t usually include too much Irish Hip-hop, so when West Belfast trio Kneecap were announced for the 2000 Trees festival in 2022, it didn’t make much of an impact on me. However, schedule clashes – and the fact that the best food vendors were at the main stage – meant that on a sunny Thursday afternoon, I still ended up sitting in a field in Cheltenham when DJ Próvaí, Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap walked onto that stage and (metaphorically) set fire to it.
They won the crowd over that day with a high energy set which mixed humour, anger, drugs and a healthy distain for the police; and that is exactly what comes across in their self-titled debut film, Kneecap.
On the face of it Kneecap is the semi-autobiographical story of how the band came to be and their first brush with notoriety, mixing the truth and fiction with an impressive quantity of narcotics. Think Rocketman but with a few more cars on fire.
We begin with the young versions of our two protagonists Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh) and Móglaí Bap (Naoise Ó Cairealláin) learning Irish at the feet of Móglaí Bap’s dad Arlo (Michael Fassbender); a former republican para who sets out the main theme for this film and their music in general “Every word spoken in Irish is a bullet fired for Irish Freedom”.
As a Brit who was taught in school about how great the British empire was, learning about what the British actually did to indigenous languages was quite a shock. Strange how they didn’t teach that side in my Norfolk high school…
Jumping forward to 2017 we now meet the third member of the group DJ Próvaí (JJ O Dochartaigh) working as a teacher in an Irish speaking school. He is disillusioned by the dreary materials he has to teach with, and the lack of any modern examples of Irish.
This all provides an excellent context that grounds the band’s primary mode of operation. The narrative is set to a soundtrack of the group’s incendiary music, and that leaves Kneecap artistically very well rounded – crafting an incredible emotional journey, highlighting the importance of keeping hold of your identity in an industry, and world that tries to take this away.
The emotional whiplash I felt going between comedy and tragedy felt like this was the only way anyone would be able to tell this story and Kneecap hits this note perfectly. And even the casting adds to this. Before seeing the film, I did wonder if having the actual band as the main actors in the film would work, but it brings a level of authenticity to the film that some similar films can lack. It’s definitely helped by the fact that all three put in incredible performances, led by O Dochartaigh who brings a level of inner conflict to the screen of a seasoned professional rather than someone in their first starring role.
So far Kneecap has only played in a few smaller cinemas but you can’t help but feel it will get a larger release soon, and it deserves one. For anyone with an interest in anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist stories, Kneecap is a must, but it’s more than that. Kneecap is one of best stories I’ve seen in recent years, and I would recommend anyone to give it a chance. (Except maybe DUP members.)