Kneecap selected to represent Ireland at Oscars

Ellen O'Donoghue

The Irish Film and Television Academy has announced that Rich Peppiatt’s Irish language film, Kneecap, based on the Belfast rap group of the same name, will be entered into the International Feature Film category as Ireland's submission at next year's Academy Awards.

The film features the band members, alongside big names, such as Michael Fassbender and Simone Kirby.

It is already the first Irish language film to win a Sundance Film Festival award, and will be released in Irish cinemas next Thursday, August 8th.

Kneecap still has some distance to travel, however, to get to the Oscars ceremony.

Countries (bar the US) are invited to submit one film with dialogue predominately in a language other than English. A preliminary shortlist of 15 titles is announced on December 17th, with the final five nominations to emerge a month later.

Regardless, Kneecap are in with a chance, having won an award at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

Colm Bairéad's An Cailín Ciúin was the first Irish feature – and the first title in the national language – to receive a nomination in the category, having made it all the way to the final five in the category formerly known as best foreign language film at last year’s Oscars.