Kneecap
Rich Peppiatt, Irlande, GB, 2024o
Lorsque la soirée festive du leader du groupe, Liam, se termine dans une salle d'interrogatoire de la police, le professeur d'irlandais JJ, qui doit servir d'interprète à la policière anglophone, l'aide non seulement à cacher le LSD dans son carnet, mais aussi à mettre en musique les textes qu'il contient sur la drogue, le sexe et la résistance à l'establishment britannique. Mais la police, les politiciens et les paramilitaires ont tous leurs raisons de vouloir étouffer le succès du groupe. Entre les boycotts de la radio et les incendies criminels, ces garçons chaotiques deviennent soudain le symbole de toute une génération.
Kneecap is a film about a hip-hop band whose three members constantly consume ketamine and other drugs so they can rap about it. About a band whose songs are promptly banned from radio stations because they contain too many vulgar words, references to sex, and drugs. In which the housewives and mothers of the city take to the barricades to get these songs back on the radio. The film is both radically political and extremely funny, as vulgar, drug-glorifying, and sexually open as its characters. In short: inspiring and heartwarming. It is set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where a ceasefire has been in place for thirty years, but the traces of violence are still visible on the facades of houses and in people's faces. The fathers are dead or on the run, and one's own identity is constantly under attack, especially if one considers oneself a Republican. Every word spoken in Irish, as learned from one's father who was in the IRA, is considered “a bullet for freedom.” In this case, Kneecap demonstrates to even the most skeptical that hip-hop is nothing more than a machine gun. The band Kneecap really exists, its members play themselves, and their music is so energetic that even those who are not particularly interested in hip-hop will find themselves carried away by it.
Dominic Schmid