KNEECAP

 After what seems like decades in the cultural wilderness home-grown Irish cinema has produced three great Irish films in as many years, firstly with "The Quiet Girl" and now, this year, with "That They May Face the Rising Sun" and now "Kneecap", named after the Irish-speaking Hip-Hop band who just happen to brilliantly play themselves.

Fundamentally Rich Peppiatt's instant classic is about how two lads from West Belfast became the highly successful and highly controversial band Kneecap with more than a little help from their Irish teacher who became band member number three with a balaclava and the name DJ Provai but unlike most films about bands or the music industry "Kneecap" is a kaleidoscopic gem of almost surreal sounds and images that blows the cobwebs off the genre with all the force of an exploding bomb.

This is at once a history of a band and of the Northern Ireland Troubles unlike any other and it's very funny in a way no other film that's dealt with the Troubles has been before. Of course there are people in Northern Ireland who would ban the film or just maybe flush it down the toilet, (a recent concert by the band had to be rescheduled after protests that the venue, on the East Bank of Derry's River Foyle, would prove problematic), but then that's their loss since both the film "Kneecap" and the band Kneecap are just about as good as movies and music can get.