FITTINGLY, FOR THE CONTROVERSIAL BELFAST HIP-HOP GROUP THAT THRIVES ON BREAKING RULES, THEIR ROWDY BIOPIC FOLLOWS SUIT. WELCOME TO

WORDS DORIAN LYNSKEY

MICHAEL BUCKNER BEN WACHENJE

Belfast teacher JJ ‘DJ Provai’ Ó Dochartaigh at his home garage studio;

LIKE SUPERHERO MOVIES, music biopics are obliged to hit certain beats, from the childhood epiphany to the first flush of fame to the backstage meltdown. In the wake of Walk The Line and Ray, all of the genre’s cliches were ruthlessly parodied by 2007’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (“Goddamit, this is a dark fucking period!”) but survived unashamed. Since the $910 million coup of Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018, movies about pop and its perils have flooded out: Rocket Man, Elvis, Bob Marley: One Love, Back To Black. It might be time for a Walk Hard sequel.

“Studios like existing IP,” says Rich Peppiatt, the director of the unorthodox new biopic Kneecap. “A band with a fanbase de-risks things. But I think audiences are getting a little bit tired of the same old paint-by-numbers approach.”

One reason why Peppiatt has managed to make the most refreshing, freewheeling music biopic since 2002’s 24 Hour Party People is that Belfast’s Irish-language hip-hop trio Kneecap aren’t actually famous yet. In fact, they’re only just releasing their official debut album this month. They co-wrote the movie, in which they play themselves, as a mischievous bilingual blend of autobiography and fiction that leaves the uninitiated (which is to say almost everybody) wondering what is true and what isn’t. When the film debuted at Sundance in January, many audience-members greeted the real-life video footage over the closing credits like a twist. “That was an accidental bullseye,” Peppiatt says with delight. “Never did I realise that would be the moment when people went, ‘Oh, they’re a fucking band!’ Suddenly you had an ending after an ending.”

The same novelty and ambiguity that makes the film so exciting, though, is what made it an uphill battle for its first-time director. “On paper it’s a film that shouldn’t exist,” Peppiatt says. “It’s in a language that barely anyone speaks, about a band no-one’s heard of. It doesn’t make any sense.”

The first people he needed to convince that this off-the-wall idea would fly were the band themselves.

TO MEET KNEECAP the day after seeing them on screen is to feel like you know them already. Liam Óg ‘Mo Chara’ Ó Hannaidh is cheerful and charming, Naoise ‘Móglaí Bap’ Ó Cairealláin is spiky and garrulous with a face-splitting grin, and JJ ‘DJ Próvaí’ Ó Dochartaigh, the oldest member, is wry and reserved. They’re even dressed like they are in the movie, in bright sportswear. Whether rapping or talking, they put on a show.