Some films become real pop-cultural phenomena thanks to word of mouth. We remember the film Everything Everywhere All At Once by the duo The Daniels, who won eight Oscars in 2023. And everything suggests that this new film, unveiled in a few festivals, will also become an event for an entire generation.
Kneecap: the most exciting musical film of the moment
Des best-sellers de Sally Rooney (Normal People) to the success of the post-punk group Fontaines DC, Ireland today manages to impose its soft power after having been for years held in a vice by the United States in the West and Great Britain in the East.. Like South Korea over the past twenty years, the Emerald Isle is becoming more and more attractive. Its actors, still courted by Hollywood and the BBC, are increasingly asserting their Irish identity, like Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders), who finished his acceptance speech at the Oscars in 2024 (where he walked out with a Best Actor statuette for Oppenheimer) with a sentence in Gaelic: “Thank you very much.”, which means “thank you very much”.
On site, many filmmakers show that Ireland is not only a breeding ground for actors that British and American productions can employ at will. The success of the masterpiece The Banshees of India by Martin McDonagh with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson – very influenced by the work of Dublin playwright John Synge -, animated films by Tomm Moore (Brendan and the Secret of Kells, The Song of the Sea et The Wolf People) or the series Normal People revealed a vibrant film industry of great thematic and stylistic richness.
In 2024, the northern irish film Kneecap was unanimously acclaimed at festivals, notably the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT Audience Award, and the Dinard British and Irish Film Festival in Brittany.. It is a biopic about Belfast’s most irreverent rap group, consisting of Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh), Móglaí Bap (Naoise Ó Caireallain) and DJ Próvaí (JJ Ó Dochartaigh). Committed to the linguistic and cultural recognition of Northern Ireland and the reunification of the two Irelands, the trio, which mixes the English language and Irish Gaelic in its music, co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film. The three members of the group play their own roles in the film!
Looking back at the beginnings of this rap group which became a phenomenon in Ireland, Kneecap is also the portrait of a Northern Irish youth suffering from the trauma resulting from the period of the Troubles, lost in a daily life made of poverty, drugs, sex and community tensions between Catholics and Protestants. Both a musical film and an insolent dramatic comedy, Kneecap is at the crossroads of the film Trainspotting – the cult film by Danny Boyle which told the daily life of the youth of Edinburgh in Scotland in the 1990s – and 8 Mile – the film in which Eminem plays a young rapper from Detroit inspired by his own youth.
In addition to being very gifted rappers, Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí are completely convincing actors. They opposite the German-Irish actor Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds), absolutely magnetic in the role of an absent father and member of the IRA wanted by the British police, and to the excellent Simone Kirby (Peaky Blinders). The soundtrack, which includes several major singles and tracks from Kneecap’s first album, also pays a nice tribute to the new Irish independent music scene (including a song by Fontaines DC).
Chosen to represent Ireland at the 2025 Oscars, Kneecap has everything to become a phenomenon in France. It will be released in French cinemas on June 18, 2025, thanks to the distributor Wayna Pitch. The most impatient will be able to discover it in Nantes during the month of December 2024. In any case, we promise you that you will hear about Kneecap !
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