Keswick Film Club - Reviews - Kneecap

Sunday's showing of Kneecap was something of a departure even for the already eclectic Keswick Film Club programme. There can't be many biopics about Irish language hip-hop groups – Irish language hip-hop groups being pretty thin on the ground – but this vibrant, entertaining film was worthy of its slot.

A semi-fictionalised story of the eponymous Belfast-based trio, the film charts their rise from scrappy drug-dealing, police-dodging tearaways in the Gaeltacht Quarter of West Belfast to considerable popularity, and unlikely figureheads propelled to the front of a movement to preserve their native tongue.

Kneecap is much more than a standard 'how we rose to success' story. It's a multifaceted, sophisticated blend of satirical politics with an overall message of strength in community. It goes about this in the most raucous, endearingly shambolic, energetic ways imaginable, and is endlessly inventive as to how it portrays identity and action, and makes social and political comment. And it's funny. The Alhambra audience certainly thought so.

Among many remarkable aspects of this debut feature directed by and co-created with Englishman Rich Peppiatt, perhaps the most striking is that group members Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin and JJ Ó Dochartaigh all star convincingly as themselves. As non-actors, this is a pretty amazing feat and it's not apparent until the post film credits show the band performing across several years.

Each band member gets their own storyline, Hollywood star Michael Fassbender drops in as Naoise's supposedly dead IRA father and there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by Gerry Adams.

The 18 certificate (for drug use and strong language – there's plenty of both) had not deterred the Keswick audience, and if you missed this funny, fearless film seek it out elsewhere.