The musical biopic genre is so staid, so humdrum, it’s difficult to imagine anyone having a wildly different take on it. In his directorial debut, British-Irish writer/director Rich Peppiatt, however, doesn’t just want to dismantle structures. He wants to obliterate them, whether it’s what constitutes acceptable music, politics, protest or language. While most biopics are made with an eye looking backwards, recounting the events that made the subject who they are, Peppiatt’s rebellious, comedic lark “Kneecap”—a portrait of the real-life titular Belfast hip-hop band, whose potent music galvanized a movement to save the Irish Gaelic language from legal banishment—looks at their fight from the moment of its inception of their present resistance.
Following a neorealist spirit, Peppiatt enlisted the real-life members of Kneecap to play themselves. In it, DJ Próvaí is a music teacher, who, after seeing Liam Óg “Mo Chara” Ó hAnnaidh and Naoise “Móglaí Bap” Ó Cairealláin live, desperately wants to record them. The lads, however, have a few problem: The mother of Liam’s girlfriend, a cop, is determined to shut down their shows, Naoise’s mother is lonely and despondent, his father Arlo (Michael Fassbender)—a member of paramilitary organization for independence—has been in hiding from authorities for years. In between rampant partying, scenes of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, the trio of men stand up for the right for their music, their heritage, and their language to exist in an energetic and rambunctious imagining of their origins.
RogerEbert.com spoke with Peppiatt at the Hotel Thermal during the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival to speak about the first time he saw Kneecap, the film’s neorealism, and the impact he hopes the biopic will have on oppressed communities.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You first saw the band play in Belfast back in 2019. What was that experience like?
You know, my favorite band growing up was Rage Against the Machine. And to me, the politics have gone out of music—not completely, there’s always political acts—but Kneecap just really threw me back to that period of a band who’s politics first. They didn’t care about the consequences of the positions they took on things, and they were going to use their platform to sort of press the case for their causes. Kneecap, even back then in 2019, were that. I just love the energy about them. There were a thousand young people there in Belfast watching them even back then, who were just obsessive. They knew every word that they were rapping in a language that I didn’t realize anyone actually spoke really, other than a few farmers out in the countryside.
To me, it was like: Hang on, there’s all these young people who are engaging with a language that I thought was pretty much dead. And there’s something in that story, right? I don’t know what that story is, but we had this political backdrop that there was a big fight to try and get political recognition of the Irish language because despite it being the language of Ireland in the north of Ireland, it wasn’t recognized, which is crazy. It had been erased completely from any official recognition. I just saw this connection between this politically serious battle and these boys on stage throwing drugs into the crowd causing absolute bedlam, but doing it through a language that few people spoke.
I’m someone who has always struggled with languages, right? I failed at French. At school, I was just terrible at languages and I’ve kind of had this really negative view that: Oh, those sad losers. I freaking hate languages. But they were making it cool. They’re making the Irish language cool. If someone had been rapping in French near me when I was learning French at school, then I might have taken it more seriously. And then by the time I’d actually met them and engaged with them on the film, I decided to start learning Irish. I was in my first Irish language class, and they went around the room and asked: Why are you here? Half of the people were there because they were Kneecap fans. That’s crazy. Suddenly you realize that this is beyond the music; they’re having this real world cultural impact. That to me just felt special. How many bands can say that? I was hooked.
How did you hook them? What was the conversation like to bring them on board?
It took a few months to nail them down. They are the worst communicators on Mother Earth [Laughs] I’ve had their email address. But it might as well just go into the ether. I bumped into a random girl who used to go out with one of them, and the minute I was like: Do you still have Naoise’s number? And she was like: Yes. I got Naoise’s number and called him and was like: I’m the dude who’s been emailing you. He was like: I dunno, we get lots of emails, mate. I asked if they could just meet me for a pint, tonight. They met me and I just bought them drinks all night. And if you buy them drinks all night, they’re pretty much set. I could’ve said I got a bank robbery, and they would’ve been ready. So I said I wanted to make a movie, not a documentary. I wanted them to be in it and I wanted them to play themselves in it. It was nothing.
So there wasn’t any hesitancy from them, in terms of playing themselves? Because to my knowledge, they hadn’t acted before.
There was never ever really a discussion about anyone playing them. They’re such charismatic guys, it would’ve been weird to take a band that at the time, remember no one had really heard of them, they were a local band, and recast them. Now if we’re talking about Oasis, then maybe you’d get someone to play them. Also, I think the biopic genre has been run over so many times, and there was something quite cool about the idea of a biopic in real time rather than looking back at a band at the end of their careers, or who are dead or whatever. But rather doing a proper band almost in real time as they are growing and doing their story with them in it.
I don’t think even I believed that it would come together in the way it has. Last week they released their debut album and the film is coming out in a few weeks time. So it is happening in real time. I don’t think I’ll ever make a movie that will feel the way this film feels in terms of the experience of making it with them, of being at Glastonbury over the weekend with them and seeing 30,000 people going mad about them. I’ve got no musical talent whatsoever. But being part of this film is the closest I’ll ever get to that. Do you know what I mean? And so I’m very grateful. They’re also my best mates. It’s a lonely place sometimes directing, but to be in a situation where you’re making it with friends, in that way it has a collaborative spirit.
What was it like actually filming in Belfast? I had to think having those surroundings must have given the film a unique vibrancy.
Well, Belfast is the graffiti capital of Europe. It has like this natural palette of color that just gives energy. There’s color everywhere. Living there means that you’re not really breaking in the place. For years before we were filming it, we were writing it thinking: that might be a location, that might be another one. You were spotting things and you were recording the city as you went. Beyond that, there’s something about shooting in your home city. I don’t know. It’s somewhere that we all have a lot of affection for. That feeling transfers to the screen. In a weird way, where you choose to shoot and how you choose to shoot, all connects to your lived experience of that place in a strange way. It’s a character in the film. And it’s a protagonist rather than an antagonist.
I’m wondering if having familiarity with their surroundings made it easier for the band to be in character, so to speak.
I think so. That familiarity of place helps in a way. I also think that sometimes it’s forgotten that there’s more difficulty for them to have to play versions of themselves than it is if I’d come to them and said: Look, we’re gonna do this film and you’re gonna be like sixth-century knights. That would be easier because you can completely disassociate who you are, put on a helmet, get on a horse and do your thing. But to say I want you to play yourself and put who you are up on that screen and let everyone judge is a very brave thing.
People think: Oh, they play themselves. It’s an easier thing. I don’t think it is. I think it’s harder. Because it makes you have to really look at your own self and question your own self and the decisions you make. You’re not a character, it’s actually you. For in particular, that was very hard because his storyline with his mother is true. His mother killed herself. That’s something that comes up at the end, there is a ‘rest in peace’ during the credits. We’re always thinking about what happened when we were writing the script. Things like that were difficult, where real life crosses over into story. For him to then have the bravery to get on set and have someone play his own mother, who had a couple years before killed herself, was something I’ve always admired.
Knowing how personal these stories were, was there then hesitation bringing a big star like Michael Fassbender in? Because he could easily distract from the neorealist aspects.
We never really thought about that. It is interesting though, a couple of the reviews, and the reviews have been massively positive, say they feel like he’s miscast or that having him there is slightly jarring. There was one review that said: You have Michael Fassbender and you use him for like five minutes. Are you fucking crazy? [Laughs] You know what I mean? He’s in least 20 minutes of the film.
There was no real calculation about that. It was a matter of us needing an Irish speaking actor. There’s not many. We wanted to shoot as high as we could and for the boys, it was Michael Fassbender. He’s a hero because he played Bobby Sands in “Hunger.” In Belfast, in particular, he’s revered for the way that he did such justice to someone who’s a legend. We got in contact with him and he was very quickly on board. He was more fanboying off them than they were fanboying him. That was quite amusing.
But look, people will have their own interpretations of it. People are welcome to feel as they feel. But Michael was always very generous in what he brought to the production. He made everyone raise their game because we all went: We’ve got a real thing here. Do you know what I mean? As the boys say, even the catering got better. [Laughs] Also, he’s been in the game long enough to know that he didn’t want to make this a Michael Fassbender film. He was always like: Look, I’m gonna be a bit tough about promo and marketing. But because he knows better than us about how the marketing of these things work, it was funny when we got through to that stage, you could see how it turned.
Now that we’ve all become great friends, he absolutely loves the boys. It was a pleasure to work with him. When you have him on your monitor, as a young director making his first narrative feature, and you’re looking at Michael Fassbender, and you’re seeing the control he has over his performance, you just understand when you look at that moment, why he is such a huge star and one of the best character actors of his generation. It was a real privilege for me and a real moment of going: You’re a real film director.
We didn’t always get on, me and him. We had some blowups, and I was standing on a beach going: I’m having an argument with Michael Fassbender. Now we’re real. That was great fun. And then we’re sitting in the pub afterwards, as us Irish do, we have a couple of pints, and it’s all done. We move on to the next day.
Were there any specific reasons for the blow-ups?
Not really. As with everything, when you are in a creative process, people have different ideas of things. When you’re passionate and you care, you stand by your position. I have no problem having arguments with people. I hate the idea that people don’t want to have an argument. If Michael had stood there and gone: Whatever you want, man. I don’t really care. Do you want me to do this? Do you want me to do that? Whatever you want. It doesn’t matter to me that—that matters a lot less than someone standing there and going: No, I want to do this because this is what I think my character would do. That’s two people really engaged in a film. That’s what it’s all about.
I want to return back to how Kneecap’s music has affected their audiences. I often struggle with how much impact film really has on the world. What impact do you hope this film has?
That depends geographically to a degree. I think it will have a different impact on an English audience compared to an Irish audience. There’s never been a film that’s been made about young people in the north of Ireland that focus is not on the Troubles and not on what’s passed but is about the state of affairs for young people. Kneecap is a band. But they’re also a kind of a movement in a way. They have this following, and it’s amazing when you go to places like Glastonbury and now 30,000 people are in that crowd, and they are not all from Belfast. There’s people from all around the world. There’s something about them that I can’t really put my finger on that connects with people because they’re men of the people. They’re not rock stars. They’re just average lads. I think people really like that.
One thing about sharing the film in America as much as we have is the amount of people, particularly in the African-American community who have come to us and said they really connect with the film in a way that would never have occurred to us. Do you know what I mean? We were just making it for Ireland. And finding that they’re connecting with certain things and understanding the mindset of these kids really intrigues me.
Traveling around with the film, every audience seems to find a different thing that connects with their lived experience or of their indigenous culture and how that’s been treated. Hopefully the lasting impact is reminding people that if they don’t protect their own culture through learning their language or telling their stories and things like that, then it will die. English is such a hegemonic thing. It’s becoming more and more hegemonic. That’s not a good thing because once a language or once a culture goes, there’s no bringing it back. It’s kind of like the environment. It’s gone. Hopefully amongst all the sex, drugs and hip hop that comes through strongly.
