The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Kneecap.

The tone that you set from the very beginning lets the audience know that they’re going to see something that’s serious, but you’re not going to weigh them down with it, and I appreciate that so much about this film.
Rich Peppiatt: Yeah, that was something that was important to us, to make sure it was entertaining. And there’s been so many films about Belfast which can stray sometimes into a turgidly serious tone. And we couldn’t really make a film about Kneecap that was going to be deadly serious, could we? Although maybe we’ll try, someday! “Kneecap: The Drama.” But also, I don’t think it could have been a straight comedy, you know. It is a weird film in the sense that people say it’s like a drama… or a “dramedy,” which is a horrible word… Is it a comedy, is it a black comedy? I think someone even called it a musical. Some people say it’s a documentary (I definitely don’t think it’s a documentary), but, you know, it doesn’t really sit anywhere perfectly.  But surely we can have films that don’t exactly fit into a box, can’t we?

it is one of the oldest languages in Europe, and it was driven nearly to extinction

Can you discuss the songs that were used in the film?
Móglaí Bap: Yeah, so, we don’t just confine ourselves to the Irish language, because that’s just not true to our reality. Like, I mean, English has such a big presence in Ireland. The language, even in the Gaeltacht regions, which is the Irish speaking regions around Ireland, they’ll drop in and out of Irish sometimes because, you know, English is on the TV, it’s on the radio. So, we don’t confine ourselves to one language, which is actually quite helpful when writing songs. Because if I run out of things to rhyme with, I can just get a whole new dictionary, um, to help me out. So, basically we talk about our experiences, just like, you know, youth culture of partying and stuff. I’m sure you’ve seen what I’m talking about in the film. 

And and then obviously talking about the importance of being Irish in territory that is under British occupation still, and the fact that the language is one of the oldest languages in Europe, and it was driven nearly to extinction after 800 years of like brutalization. So it’s just it’s a miracle that the language survived, and we talk about that in our music… basically talk about the language, and partying and stuff, and we try not to be too serious, even though we’re talking about serious subjects. We think it’s important to sprinkle comedy throughout. People are sick of being fucking preached to all the time. So yes, we have a lot of serious things to say, but we do it comically .

I wonder if you could also speak about how you decided what would be in the Irish language, what would be English, what would be captioned, and what wouldn’t?
DJ Provai: Whenever the three of us are speaking, it’s always in Irish. And then whenever someone else who doesn’t speak Irish comes into the conversation, comes into the scene, then that’s when it switches. So I don’t know if people notice that when it’s happening. 

Mo Chara: Yeah, I mean, we wanted the film to be realistic in that way. We didn’t want to do a film in Belfast entirely in Irish that is, you know, about the Irish language. Because I’d say 99 percent of shops or bars you walk into, the people behind the bar won’t speak much Irish, if any Irish at all. So we didn’t want to do the whole film in Irish because it wouldn’t be realistic. So, wherever it was realistic for it to be in Irish, it was in Irish.

MB: And I think there’s a very interesting technique in the film (and I had to reach for this) is that there’s this constant power dynamic with the language. For instance, there’s the scene with me and Fassbender, and I’m speaking Irish to him, but he refuses to speak Irish to me, and that’s him trying to have a jab at me, or to get one over me. And then you’ve got, uh, when Fassbender’s talking to his on-screen wife: He speaks Irish to her, and she refuses to speak Irish to him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in any movie, where language is… kind of weaponized on like such a small level, on a personal level. 

RP: I also think in the interrogation scene, which is one of my favorite scenes, language is such an important part of the dynamic. There’s a three-way power struggle, where [DJ Próvaí] is sort of in the middle of it. Whose side is he going to be? But the language is kind of the battleground, you know, because they’re able to talk to each other and exclude one person from the conversation. In that way, they’re able to weaponize the language. You know, I just remember that scene being something that was really fun to write, because you realize that the minute one person of a threesome can’t speak the language, you can have a lot of comedic fun with who understands what, and when.

Two of the things that resonated with me were the references to the American Civil Rights Movement, and to American hip hop music. Many audiences would probably not have made those connections on their own, to Irish culture.
MC: I don’t think a lot of people know that in 1969, the way it worked for voting in the north (where we’re from), is that you were able to vote based on how much property you owned. So all of the unionist and loyalist Protestant communities owned maybe four or five houses that they would rent out, so they had four or five votes per person, whereas the Catholic communities didn’t have enough money to own their own property… so basically they couldn’t vote. And that was obviously done that on purpose; that was by no means a mistake. So the republican catholic community saw what was happening in America with the black civil rights marches, and took a lot of inspiration from that and then started the civil rights marches in 1969, was it? 

DJP: 1969 in Derry— they were out doing the peaceful civil rights marches and they were beaten off the streets, bloodied, and then someone caught it on camera and it got cast worldwide and people saw what was happening then, and more people around Ireland were like, “right, they’re not giving us a fair shake here.” And they went out in droves and, yeah… Because of that then, we got one person, one vote.

MB: I think American politics has been a big inspiration for Irish politics for a long time. You had Frederick Douglass, of course, who came and did a tour, a lecture tour of Ireland. And also the Black Panthers were a massive inspiration to Ireland. For example, when Bernadette Devlin McAliskey got the key to the city of New York, she went and gave it to the Black Panther Party in ’69.

And also, of course, Angela Davis. She came to Belfast one time to the school that we went to, the Irish Secondary School. Because when the school was started, the first Irish secondary school only started in 1991, and the British government refused to give it any funding. So it was all community funded. By the people, by the parents. And Angela Davis came to visit the school one time. You’ve got the rest of the story…

MC: Yeah, there’s a funny story just of how Angela Davis came to see the school because she had heard about, you know, that it was grassroots and community level, and she came in and it was after the school had closed—  and there was just a couple of kids sitting around and she was like, what’s this? And they had to say, “oh… detention.” So Angela Davis got these three kids out of detention! It was a great story. I mean, I don’t think the principal’s gonna stand up to Angela Davis. So, she freed the three students.