Sundance Audience Award-winning film Kneecap charts the early days of Belfast hip-hop group Kneecap, who are now globally famous for their compelling lyrics that combine English with Irish.
Their fun, funny, and unexpectedly touching film is in cinemas this week. It’s semi-fictional; there are outlandish scenes of ketamine highs, laugh-out-loud sexy roleplay, police manhunts, and references to generational trauma and political tension in a city still scarred by the Troubles.
Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and Naoise Ó Cairealláin, who go by their rap names Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap when they’re on stage, are not actors – or at least they weren’t before this film. They play themselves – “low-level drug dealers” – with great humour. The third member of Kneecap, JJ Ó Dochartaigh, plays a school teacher who joins the group as the balaclava-wearing DJ Próvaí. Michael Fassbender plays Móglaí Bap’s father.
“He was absolutely starstruck when we asked him,” jokes Ó Cairealláin about the Shame actor’s involvement. “He begged us. His agent rang and begged us, ‘Please can he be in the movie’,” says Óg Ó Hannaidh, smirking. Speaking to Broadsheet ahead of the film’s release from Cultúrlann in West Belfast, Ó Cairealláin and Óg Ó Hannaidh are a good craic, as you might expect.
“It’s a good script, and once his agent had read it they were interested. He’d obviously done Hunger before in Belfast [playing] Bobby Sands. He’s a fan of the band as well,” says Óg Ó Hannaidh.
Fassbender’s character Arló is crucial in how the film employs the overlapping usage of English and Irish language to explore power dynamics in Northern Ireland. “I think that’s the great thing in the movie, the psychology of language,” says Ó Cairealláin. “There’s this constant back and forth of using the language as a mode of control. With Arló, I speak Irish to him. He speaks English to me. He speaks Irish to Dolores [played by Simone Kirby] and she speaks English to him. It’s a constant layer of people trying to take back control and not give in.”
Kneecap, the band, are at the forefront of the fight to save the Irish language. At the end of the movie there are clips from the band’s real gigs, showing the hunger from young people for modern music featuring Irish lyrics.
“People relate to what we stand for, more than what words we use,” says Óg Ó Hannaidh. “I think it’s cool that Kneecap resonates with people who speak indigenous languages [all over the world] because it’s like a modern take on indigenous culture – that’s what Kneecap represents,” adds Ó Cairealláin.
An early scene in the film shows Óg Ó Hannaidh refusing to speak English to a police officer. It’s comedic and serious at the same time. “That was a lot of fun,” he says. “It’s this great dynamic: [the police officer] knows I speak English, but I’m refusing to. [The school teacher] is having to translate what I’m saying, when I could easily say it in English. He doesn’t want to be there. I don’t want to be there. It’s such a great triangle.”
Writer-director Rich Peppiatt approached the band after seeing one of Kneecap’s gigs in Belfast. It took some convincing before they agreed to making a film together. What made them change their mind? “It was his persistence,” says Óg Ó Hannaidh. “And the fact he kept buying us pints.”
“People noticed we had this unique original story and people would contact us over the years, but then we’d talk to them and it’d be some fella sitting in his ma’s basement, so that’s why we were hesitant,” adds Ó Cairealláin.
When asked where the line is in terms of fact and fiction in the film, Óg Ó Hannaidh says they didn’t want to take audiences by the hand. “The crazier stories are actually the ones that are true, but we like the lens to be blurred. We don’t want you going into the film knowing exactly what’s true and what isn’t, because that just ruins the magic of it.”
The one scene they are happy to reveal as true is Móglaí Bap’s christening at a stone altar used when Catholicism was outlawed. “I got baptised in a forest and the British army thought there was an IRA training camp going on. There’s a newspaper article about it from the time. I think they thought there was something suspicious about a bunch of Catholics going into a forest, either because they thought there was an IRA training camp going on or because there was a priest with a baby in the forest. I don’t know what they thought was worse.”
If you Google the group, one of the top recommended questions is “Is Kneecap a real band?” “Some people still didn’t think we were a real band when they left the cinema,” says Ó Cairealláin, laughing. Kneecap are very real, and they’re heading to Australia on tour in March 2025. One of their Melbourne shows is already sold out, and one in Sydney has had a venue upgrade to meet ticket demand.
“As if we weren’t busy enough, we released the album [Fine Art] at the same time as the movie. So we’re running around promoting these things and not getting paid a penny,” says Óg Ó Hannaidh. When asked if they’d act again, he says “If the money’s right. We’ll do Kneecap two, three, four, like the Fast & Furious. “Maybe we’ll do an ad for Guinness,” says Ó Cairealláin.
Kneecap is in cinemas from August 29 via Madman Entertainment. Kneecap are touring Australia in March 2025 via Frontier Touring.
