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[title]Kneecap might well be the first group to release a debut album and biopic at the same time. The Belfast-based trio of Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí are best known for their politically-charged rave-heavy tunes, triggering media backlash (their song ‘C.E.A.R.T.A’ was banned from radio stations for its drug references and cursing) and death threats from both unionists and republicans. All of which director Rich Peppiatt is putting on the big screen.
Kneecap takes you on an amphetamine-fuelled joyride through the group’s musical upbringing, from late-night ketamine binges in a makeshift studio to some pretty hairy paramilitary run-ins. Oh, and Michael Fassbender’s in it too. Underpinning the chaos is an important message about the erasure of indigenous languages, which struck a chord with the public at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, winning Kneecap the audience award and catapulting the group onto the global stage.
What films inspired the making of Kneecap?
Rich Peppiatt: In terms of style, I’d say Amélie. And Trainspotting because it made no apologies for the fact that it was in a thick Edinburgh accent. They had lots of terminologies most Brits wouldn’t understand, while being this window into a world of scag-heads in an Edinburgh estate that normally you wouldn’t see in the cinema.
Móglaí Bap: Yeah, and you can see a lot of Amélie in there too. Like, there’s the awkward sex scene or even just the film’s colours and the grading.
Rich Peppiatt: Absolutely. It pushes the envelope. If I was going to work for years to get a feature film off the ground, I wasn’t going to compromise on anything. I didn't mind if the film was a fucking disaster. What I couldn't cope with was [it being] a disaster and me staring at the ruin going: ‘If only I could have done it my way’.
What were the lines we wouldn’t cross? Dancing
Funny you mention Trainspotting because you’re on a lot of drugs throughout this film. Any tips for acting like you’re on ketamine?
Mo Chara: We’re method actors.
Peppiatt: We did discuss having you all on the drugs at one point, actually. See what happens. One of the producers was like: ‘No fucking way’. And to be honest, the way films are set up, they’d do the scene and then have to carry on with more after, so probably wouldn’t have worked.
Mo Chara: We did end up sniffing a lot of glucose. I was surprised we didn’t come out of it with diabetes.
You play heightened versions of yourselves. Were there any lines you couldn’t cross?
DJ Próvaí: He tried to get us to dance at one point.
Móglaí Bap: Yeah, dancing was crossing the line. We were doing this scene where we were in the garage having a massive party, taking all these drugs, and we’re just kind of throwing ideas and Rich was just like shouting orders to see what we’d do. He’s like, ‘Dance then!’ And you know, we do all these drugs, allegedly. But we don’t go dancing.
How did you get Michael Fassbender involved?
Peppiatt: We asked ourselves what the ideal casting was and we went to the top tier first. We wanted an Irish-speaker and with Fassbender, he’d also played Bobby Sands in Hunger, and he's revered in the north of Ireland for that. The character he plays in this feels like the guy who was in jail with Bobby Sands. So, we sent him the script and he came back very quickly with a text message just saying, ‘Michael here, you free to talk?’ Five minutes later, we were on a video call, and ten minutes after that he was doing the film.
Móglaí Bap: It was infectious having someone like that, so well established. Everyone brought their A-game when he was on set. The catering was very good.
How does it feel being the first Irish-speaking film to premiere at Sundance?
Mo Chara: It’s some craic. Like, Jesus!
Móglaí Bap: I don't think anybody expected to go to Sundance, let alone win the fucking audience award. And you know, it’s so colloquial in the language that we didn’t expect it to make sense to Americans, or if the humour would be lost on them because it’s so fast-paced and there would be words they wouldn’t get. But we watched it in America and then with a crowd in Belfast and we realised both were laughing, just at different parts.
Peppiatt: Yeah, the only line that didn’t land well in Texas was, ‘Cowboys are all cunts.’
The only line that didn’t land well in Texas was: ‘Cowboys are all cunts’
Why is it so important to you to spotlight the language in such a way?
Móglaí Bap: Well, it’s a core element of our identities so it felt natural to make it a core element of the film.
Mo Chara: It wasn't this real conscious decision, like with the music. When we started with the music, we weren't like: ‘Let's do it in fucking Irish’. It's a bad business model. No one speaks it. It's just that it happened naturally. It was the same with the film. For people like us, it’s just a means of communication and survival.
Móglaí Bap: I also think it’s good for people in America to see the film and understand that ‘Irish’ isn't just a weird English accent.
It’s good for Americans to understand that Irish isn’t just a weird English accent
Some may never have even known it existed.
Mo Chara: It's not that fucking long ago since the whole island spoke it. It was only 150 years ago.
Peppiatt: It’s worrying how quickly you can wipe the language out. Within 150 years you can take a language from a whole island, millions of people speaking it. To now, a hundred thousand?
DJ Próvaí: Back in the day, children would be marked every time they spoke Irish. And then at the end of the day, how many marks you had was how many beatings you got with a bat. It was seen as a peasant language and the only way to get ahead was to start speaking English. So everybody got shamed into not liking the language. But now it's kind of come full circle. You see people are using it in urban settings and socially, outside of the classroom. It's had a real revival.
Your first mural in West Belfast (which inspired the album title ‘Fine Art’) caused a stir for its depiction of a burning police Land Rover. Have you or your mates ever defaced it?
Móglaí Bap: No, but we were saying maybe we should deface it ourselves.
Mo Chara: I really had it in my head for a while. I wanted to paint over it to get the second round of media attention. But it would’ve been just me caught on camera defacing it.
Belfast feels like a character itself. There’s a scene where Mo is being chased over a famous bridge in Belfast, carrying an Irish flag balaclava and being chased by a loyalist marching band. How was that to film?
Peppiatt: The bridge is next to a fervent loyalist estate called the Village, so when I sent [the actors] to the location, they were like, ‘No fucking way, we’re going to be murdered. It's not safe to do that.’ We managed to convince the council to allow us to film at 6am on a Sunday, before the locals were up. Somehow we shot the scene without anyone getting killed.
DJ Próvaí: The description of that scene was so funny. It said ‘light running’ and there they were with all their drums and that.
Mo Chara: In Belfast, that bridge is iconic. So that scene is even more wild because of it.
And is there anything in Belfast that’s missing in London?
Móglaí Bap: Cheaper pints. And paramilitaries. You’re really lacking in them here.
In US theaters Aug 2, and UK and Ireland cinemas Aug 23