KNEECAP: A Very Different Irish-Language Film
What to know & why to get excited about the film that's bringing Irish-language cinema back into the headlines!
Almost a year since An Cailín Ciúin was breaking records on the international stage, a very different Irish-language film is now making its own waves at home & abroad. Sin céart - KNEECAP are back on the news, & they’re bringing Irish-language cinema back into the headlines with them.
The Belfast rap group’s semi-fictionalised biopic, written & directed by Rich Peppiatt, made history this month by becoming the first Irish-language film to premiere at the iconic Sundance Film Festival. Since then, KNEECAP the film has received enthusiastic reviews across the board, sitting at a round 100% on Rotten Tomatoes almost two weeks from its premiere & garnering comparison with cult classics such as Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting. Described by critics as ‘audacious’, ‘raucous’, ‘wild’ & ‘anarchic’, the ‘gleefully irreverent’ band have clearly not compromised an inch of their infamous personality for their debut on the big screen.
This was certainly reflected in the trio’s presence at the festival: after rolling into Park City in a spray-painted, tricolour-adorned PSNI Land Rover (see below!), the band held a riotous afterparty gig to celebrate the premiere, & the next day spoke out from a local vigil organised by Film Workers for Palestine. Interviewed about the Land Rover stunt, Dublin-based creative agency Tenth Man described it as a celebration of the ‘cultural moment’ represented by the film’s premiere at Sundance, & a way to amplify the band’s aim ‘to provoke reaction & conversation around the Irish language & Irish politics.’
And conversation has certainly been sparked. One of the bigger headlines of the premiere came with the news that Sony Pictures Classics had picked up the film, acquiring its distribution rights for a large number of regions & adding KNEECAP to an impressive roster that includes Whiplash, Call Me By Your Name, & several titles from award-winning director Pedro Almodóvar. Producer Trevor Birney described the Sony deal as ‘phenomenal’, saying it marks a ‘breakout moment’ for indigenous film production &, most particularly, for Belfast.
An even bigger headline then came with the announcement that KNEECAP had won the Sundance Audience Award in its category, becoming the first Irish film to win at the festival since John Carney’s Once (2007), & adding another impressive achievement to the rapidly growing trophy cupboard of Irish-language film. Fans & Irish news, film & language groups from both home & abroad have flocked to social media to congratulate the band & crew, with mention of the 2025 Oscars already being made as an exciting sense of momentum begins to build around the film.
Predictably, however, not everyone joining the conversation is happy. ‘We live in a place where people are quite easily offended by certain topics,’ said the band during the film’s press tour, & local politicians haven’t been afraid to prove their point. In particular, there seems to be concern over the film’s receipt of funding from the British Film Institute’s National Lottery scheme, though those offended have quite conveniently managed to criticise the film’s ‘controversy’ without addressing the main issue it raises - the rights of the Irish language.
The same day that KNEECAP made history for the Irish language at Sundance, Belfast-based language rights group An Dream Dearg posted a picture of a recently-erected bilingual street sign with the Irish name spray-painted over. It provides a stark illustration of the language’s contested status in the north of Ireland, & demonstrates just how significant KNEECAP’s Utah premiere was - as well as proving that it wouldn’t matter how much the rowdy trio cow-towed to respectability politics & pearl-clutchers of any persuasion, there would always be someone offended by the simple fact that they speak & rap in Irish.
Is é sin an rud is tábhachtaí. It’s not that the band aren’t aware they’re being controversial - it’s that they know it’s the only way to get people talking about issues (& talking in languages) that many would prefer swept under the rug. And their ever-growing international fanbase, coupled now with their film’s snowballing success, speaks to the idea that it is KNEECAP’s very rejection of the accepted images & familiar stereotypes of Irish speakers that makes their art so popular & refreshing.
‘Everybody has this idea of the Irish language that we all just sit about pubs playing fiddles & talking about grammar,’ said band member Mo Chara in a BBC News interview ahead of the film’s premiere. Undoubtedly, one of Gaeilge’s biggest obstacles to revival in the last century has been this exact perception of the language as old, boring, & functionally useless - all things which KNEECAP in their ‘raucous’ antics now prove it undeniably not to be. In adapting the language to their modern, urban experiences & building a youth culture around it, the boys & their fans are steadily reclaiming Irish from the past & allowing it to grow & change just like any other living language. ‘We weren’t able to take control or use our imagination with our language. It was the language of school, old times, shame,’ expanded Móglaí Bap in a later interview with The Face. But now, ‘We represent a new world of opportunity for Irish speakers.’ As Screen Ireland deftly put it: ‘A language encumbered with forty words for stone now has one for stoned.’
Just as their music has been for many ‘a Eureka moment’ proving the ‘compatibility’ of the Irish language with hip-hop, KNEECAP’s tongue-in-cheek biopic should be seen as a revelatory moment for the compatibility of Gaeilge not just with cinema, but with a multitude of very different types of films. The high-octane, ‘acidic’ Belfast comedy could not be further from the quietly beautiful arthouse palette of its fellow history-maker An Cailín Ciúin, nor does it bear much resemblance to the menacing, island-set noir of Doineann, which just three years ago became the first Irish-language film to be produced in the north of Ireland. This diversity is a triumph - it shows the world (& many people closer to home) that there are many different ways to speak, & many different stories to be told, in Ireland’s native language.
& all of this is just the beginning! An Irish-speaking rap group whose drug use & politics expose the hypocrisy in local language activism; an English writer-director who took a crash-course in Irish to make the film he wanted to make; & British public funding that is bound to get even more people riled up once the film hits cinemas later this year - KNEECAP is a headline-maker for sure, & has boldly kicked off another truly thrilling year for Irish-language film.