‘Kneecap’, the name of the Irish hip hop group, and the music biopic about — and starring — the groundbreaking trio, opens today on 700+ screens, following up a U.S. tour last fall and leading into another one.
The hybrid documentary, which was a buzzy Sundance title when Sony Pictures Classics nabbed it, recently swept the Galway Film Fleadh and was named Ireland’s Oscar International Feature submission.
Written and directed by Rich Peppiatt, it features group members — Naoise Ó Cairealláin “Móglaí Bap”; Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh “Mo Chara”; and JJ Ó Dochartaigh “Dj Provaí” as themselves, but it’s scripted, and actors, including Michael Fassbender, play their younger selves and family members. With Josie Walker, Fionnuala Flaherty, Jessica Reynolds, Adam Best and Simone Kirby.
The film follows Belfast schoolteacher JJ into the orbit of self-confessed “low-life scum” Naoise and Liam Og. When they come together as three, the needle drops on a hip-hop act like no other. Rapping in their native Irish language, Kneecap fast become the unlikely figureheads of a civil rights movement to save their mother tongue. The trio had to overcome police, paramilitaries and politicians trying to silence their defiant sound and their anarchic approach to life often makes them their own worst enemies as they lay down a global rallying cry for the defense of native cultures.
Sony sees Kneecap, which is playing both arthouses and multiplexes across top markets, as a great word-of-mouth movie to reach younger demos and music scene afficcionados as well as older indie filmgoers. The social media-heavy marketing push is one of the distributor’s biggest, targeting “a wide swathe of groups and tastes,” said SPC co-president Michael Barker.
The trio has been doing Q&As at big screenings around the country that have seen “a tremendous positive response,” he said. “It’s one of those movies that reminds me what A Hard Day’s Night (a day and half in life of the Beatles) must have felt like in 1964 — a combination of real life, but it’s a fictional story, with a lot of energy. An original fresh energy.”
Produced by Trevor Birney, Jack Tarling, Patrick O’Neill.
Greenwich Entertainment opens Venice-premiering satire Coup! by Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman in 250+ theaters. Starring Peter Sarsgaard, Billy Magnussen, Sarah Gadon, Skye P. Marshall, Faran Tahir, Kristine Nielsen and Fisher Stevens. At an isolated seaside estate during the 1918 Spanish Flu, an entitled journalist (Magnussen) and his socialite wife (Gadon) take in a mysterious grifter as a private cook (Sarsgaard). When the plague descends, so does class warfare as the newcomer rouses his fellow staff to rebel and take over the mansion.
Produced by Phiphen’s Molly Conners.
Limited releases: War Game from Submarie Deluxe, a scary near real-life look at America’s possible political future, debuts in limited release at Film Forum, adding LA, Chicago and other markets next week. The Sundance-premiering thriller doc by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss sweeps audiences into an elaborate future-set simulation that dramatically escalates the threat posed by the January 6 insurrection. The film follows a bipartisan group of U.S. defense, intelligence, and elected policymakers spanning five presidential administrations as they participate in an unscripted role-play exercise. Portraying a fictional U.S. President and his advisors, they confront a political coup backed by rogue members of the military in the wake of a contested 2024 presidential election. Like actors in a thriller, but with profound real-world stakes, the players have only six hours to save American democracy.
Gothic horror Doctor Jekyll starring Eddie Izzard opens day and date in limited release, the first U.S. debut of a relaunched Hammer Film. The campy new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella is directed by Joe Stephenson. Also stars Scott Chambers, Simon Callow, Lindsay Duncan, Jonathan Hyde, Morgan Watkins and Robyn Cara.
Chuck Chuck Baby from Dark Star Pictures, written and directed by Janis Pugh, opens in limited release. Premiered at TIFF and Edinburgh. The musical comedy set in present-day industrial North Wales follows a working-class friendship between a put-upon housewife and the newly returned object of her secret teenage passion. Stars Louise Brealey, Annabel Scholey, Sorcha Cusack, Celyn Jones and Emily Fairn.
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