Euronews Culture sat down with writer-director Rich Peppiatt to discuss his award-winning film 'Kneecap' and the importance of protecting indigenous languages.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Well the most, the thing that jumped out immediately was them throwing baggies of white powder into the crowd.
00:04It's been a while, been a while since you've been arrogant.
00:07Tilting the mic down, don't jump the remedies.
00:10Consider this here as the knock at the door before the knock at the door.
00:13Him and his wee pals, music has drawn attention from all the wrong places.
00:17Nothing but a H-double-O-D, lowlife scum.
00:22It's been a hell of a year for the actual band Kneecap, but also for you because first feature, the Sundance debut.
00:29I think it's the biggest Irish opening for an Irish language film as well, and now the nomination for Ireland for the Oscars.
00:38How has it been, this kind of whirlwind year for you?
00:41I mean, I think if Carlsberg did years, then 2024 would be nine, I suppose.
00:47If we're allowed, other beer brands are available.
00:50But yeah, no, look, it's certainly something that we didn't expect.
00:54When we debuted in Sundance, which in itself was something that was exceeding our expectations,
00:59when I met the band and they were a local act who were rapping in a language that not many people spoke,
01:06who weren't signed, never released an album, it didn't exactly scream blockbuster material, right?
01:12And so it was always kind of a quite left-field project.
01:17And I guess we've been really gratified that something that is a film that's so specific in its kind of telling
01:25has found a universal audience all around the world.
01:28Tell me something about you, something you've never told anyone else.
01:32I'm a rapper.
01:34And so if I'm not mistaken, you saw the band for the first time in 2019.
01:38That's right.
01:38Yeah. So what was it about them that grabbed you from the get-go?
01:41And was it difficult getting them on board?
01:44Well, the thing that jumped out immediately was them throwing baggies of white powder into the crowd.
01:49That sort of grabbed my attention.
01:51Sure.
01:52And, you know, they clearly had an attitude of we don't care what anyone thinks.
01:57And, you know, I think that was quite refreshing in the sense of it felt like a lot of music was very PR'd and packaged.
02:04And they sort of hark back to maybe a bit more sex, drugs and rock and roll era of just causing mayhem.
02:11And, you know, beyond that, there was 800 or so young people who were in that crowd who were rapping back to them every word in Irish.
02:20And to me, as someone who lives in Belfast, even I wasn't aware that there was a young, vibrant Irish language community.
02:29Special delivery.
02:31Hey, no more music.
02:32Every day I am not captured.
02:34It's a psychological victory against the occupiers.
02:38So-called Irish language rappers promoting anti-social behavior and violence.
02:43So you live in Belfast.
02:44If I'm not mistaken, you're married to an Irish woman.
02:47That's right. For my sins.
02:48Right. Well, the thing is, is it still was it daunting as an Englishman telling this story?
02:54It didn't do me any massive favours when I approached them and was, you know, an English fella.
02:59They were a little bit suspicious at first.
03:01I think, you know, my wife's from the same area with them in Belfast.
03:04And that sort of added a veneer of legitimacy.
03:07They were like, well, if he's married to a West Belfast redhead, then he can probably he must be able to handle us.
03:15But look, I think actually not being from Belfast was helped because I think that it is a place that is still riven by division.
03:24And everyone, if you're born there, you grow up there.
03:27It's very hard to escape some of those prejudices, beliefs, kind of just inbuilt kind of.
03:33And so someone coming in who has more of a sort of drone's eye view of the whole situation and can kind of, in a way, kind of shoot for both sides.
03:44Right. You know, the comedy was able to to attack everyone with equal opportunities.
03:49Oh, well, look who it is.
03:51Bone thugs and no harmony.
03:55But those hoots have to say this city doesn't need to be hearing.
03:59He's here asserting his right to speak Irish.
04:01A Belfast band has been criticised for chanting anti-British slogans.
04:05Every single Irish word spoken here is an insult to the history of that city in Ireland.
04:11But it's an insult to you.
04:16Also, it's a very political film because it deals with, obviously, the ceasefire generation, the police, drugs and everything like that,
04:23but also specifically about language and culture and how that's preserved.
04:27And there's that wonderful reminder, warning at the end that, you know, one indigenous language dies every 40 days.
04:35And you said that there was a universal aspect to this.
04:38How have you found people reacting while you've been touring the film with regards to that?
04:42Because that's not just Irish.
04:44It is just all over.
04:46Well, that it wasn't a statistic that I was conscious of when we set out in the film.
04:52It was, you know, kind of once we were really chugging along that I found that and realised that there was a much bigger story here to do with indigenous language and culture.
05:02And, you know, we live in a world where increasingly the hegemony of English is making people more monolingual.
05:10And that doesn't enrich us as a humanity because, you know, once a language is gone, it's gone forever.
05:16There's no way of getting it back.
05:17So it's like destroying the environment.
05:19You can't suddenly go like, oh, like, can we just do it?
05:22Can we just rewind this?
05:23Right. Once a language is gone, there's no one left to pass it on.
05:25It's done.
05:26And I think where kneecap are really important in that conversation is there is no economic value to speaking Irish in the same way.
05:35You know, there's often this idea that learn a language because it will somehow progress you in your career and things like this.
05:42But they say, well, no, there's absolutely no economic value to speak Irish.
05:45What there is is a cultural value.
05:47There's a sense of connecting with yourself, with your heritage, with, you know, it's a very poetic language, connecting yourself with the land, with nature.
05:56And, you know, trying to I think that's something that increasingly and from talking to people touring the film,
06:02that people have a kind of connecting with the idea that, you know, I should go and learn my history, my heritage, because it broadens me as a person.