Oscars 2025: Kneecap film shortlisted for Best International Feature and Best Original Song

nme.com:

Kneecap has been shortlisted for two Oscars – Best International Feature and Best Original Song.The comedy biopic, which focuses on the rise of the Belfast hip-hop group, has been included among 15 films shortlisted for the International Feature category and 14 others for Best Original Song.Band members Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin and JJ Ó Dochartaigh star in the film, which is based on a semi-fictionalised account of how the west Belfast rap group was formed.A post shared by KNEECAP (@kneecap32) The Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) selected the film for Ireland’s official submission.

Nominations for the 2025 Oscars will be announced January 17, ahead of the awards ceremony which is set to take place on March 2 in Los Angeles.NME caught up with Kneecap at Reading and Leeds Festival in August to speak about meeting Noel Gallagher and Paul Mescal at Glastonbury and what a potential Oscar nomination would mean to them.

At the time of the interview, the group knew they would be on the longlist of nominations from the IFTA, but were hopeful to make it further in the process and get shortlisted.“I’d be very surprised, hopefully, bribery works!” they joked at the time. “The fact that the film had been in hundreds of cinemas in America, it’s coming out here, in Australia, all around Europe – it’s just a bonus to us.“We just made that film because we thought it was a cool story to tell, it was our story in the Irish language in Belfast.

The fact it resonates with people from other cultures and other Indigenous languages is a bonus for us…considering every 40 days there’s an Indigenous language lost.