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Liam O’Hanna ( Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh), a member of Irish-language rap group Kneecap, has been charged with a terror offense.

The charge is related to his reportedly displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah at a concert in London in November 2024.

The Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group is proscribed as a terrorist organisation and banned under UK law.

The UK’s Metropolitan Polce said O’Hanna, whose stage name is Mo Chara, had been charged via postal requisition.

He has been summoned to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday June 18.

The charge follows the band running into the hot water at the Coachella in April after they projected “f*ck Israel,” “free Palestine” and other messages of protest against U.S. support of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza on the screen of the festival’s Sonora Stage. The messages were condemned by leading Jewish human rights organizations in the U.

Cillian Murphy has been named Best Lead Actor in the film category of the Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTAs) for the second year running.

Following his win last year for Oppenheimer (which went on to bag him the Oscar), Murphy won for his role in the film Small Things Like These.

The film, an adaptation of Claire Keegan’s novella, also won Best Film.

Complete Winners List Below

An Irish-language film about Belfast rap group Kneecap was nominated in 17 award categories. The film’s director Rich Peppiatt won best director in the film category, and it was also recognised in casting and costume design.

At the ceremony in Dublin, Ireland, Friday evening, Saoirse Ronan was a double winner, taking home Best Lead Actress for The Outrun and Best Supporting Actress for The Blitz.

Ralph Fiennes and Demi Moore were winners in the international acting categories for Conclave and The Substance respectively.

Small Things Like These, an Irish drama starring Cillian Murphy as a coal merchant and father haunted by secret abuses in a local convent sanctioned by the Catholic Church, beat out Kneecap, the hip-hop comedy featuring Michael Fassbender, to win the best film honor at the Irish Film & Television Awards 2025 during a ceremony held in Dublin on Friday. Saoirse Ronan left with two awards (the lead actress honor for her role in The Outrun and the supporting actress trophy for Blitz). Murphy won the best actor IFTA for his work in Small Things Like These. Demi Moore (The Substance) and Ralph Fiennes (Conclave) were honored in the international acting categories, and Colin Farrell (The Penguin) and Sharon Horgan (for writing Bad Sisters) earned TV statuettes.

Rich Peppiatt received the best director IFTA for Kneecap, which follows the West Belfast hip-hop trio of the same name on their mission to save their mother tongue.

Kneecap is leading the charge at this year’s Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) awards, with 17 nominations across 12 categories.

Rich Peppiatt’s feature about the eponymous Irish-language Belfast hip hop act is on an awards season roll, having led the winners at the Bifas back in December with seven awards, as well as having been shortlisted at the Oscars in the international feature category, and being longlisted in seven categories at the Baftas (with nominations announced tomorrow).

Scroll down for the full list of film nominations

Tim Mielants’ Small Things Like These, an Ireland-Belgium co-production that opened the Berlin film festival last year,...

“Kneecap” — the Irish-language music biopic that became one of the buzziest indie films of 2024 and is now tipped for both Oscar and BAFTA recognition — has, perhaps unsurprisingly, emerged far ahead of the pack of nominees for the 2025 Irish Film & TV Academy (IFTA) awards.

Rich Peppiatt’s raucous comedy, about (and starring) the Belfast rap trio of the same name, has landed an astonishing 17 nominations for the awards, including best film, director, three of the six slots for lead actor, three of the six for supporting actress and one for Michael Fassbender in the supporting actor category.

“Small Things Like These,” the considerably quieter Irish drama fronted (and produced) by Cillian Murphy has nine nominations, including lead actor for Murphy, who won the award last year for “Oppenheimer.”

Having been co-produced by Irish company Tailored Films, Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice” is also in the mix, with four nominations.

Nominations are out for the 2025 Irish Film & Television Awards with the Cillian Murphy drama Small Things Like These and the music comedy Kneecap among the tipped films. Scroll down for the full list of nominees.

Small Things Like These has nods in Best Screenplay, Lead Actor for Murphy, and Best Film. Other Best Film nominees include Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice, King Frankie, and Kneecap.

Kneecap has a strong showing across the noms, with nods in Best Director for Rich Peppiatt and all three of the film’s leads pop up in Best Actor. Paul Mescal also received a Best Actor nomination for his role in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II.

On the TV side, Sharon Horgan’s Bad Sisters is nominated for Best Drama while the Eddie Redmayne thriller The Day of the Jackal has multiple noms, including Best Director for a Drama Series.

The Irish Film & Television Academy...

From the return of “Squid Game” to a Beyoncé halftime show, here are the best titles and events coming to streaming this month.

It’s the holiday season, and this December, the gifts keep on coming! Before 2024 comes to a close, top streamers like Netflix, Peacock, Mubi, and more are getting ready to end the year with a bang, led by major season premieres, streaming debuts, and livestreamed events.

Among the most notable this month is the long-awaited second season of Netflix’s Korean survival thriller “Squid Game,” with Emmy winner Lee Jung-jae returning as Player 456 to try to take down the deadly competition from the inside. But from this year’s NFL Christmas match-ups

Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap raises a fist and a finger to language erasure as the rowdy Irish rap trio fights censorship and becomes the unexpected faces of a movement to save their native language, reminding...

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This December, Netflix is bringing you a lot of entertainment, from the highly anticipated second season of Squid Game to a thrilling action thriller film titled The Carry-On. However, for the purposes of this article, we are only including the films that are coming to Netflix this month and have an 89% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score. So, check out the five best films that are coming to Netflix in December 2024 with an 89% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

Zero Dark Thirty (December 1) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91% Credit – Sony Pictures

Zero Dark Thirty is a political action thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow from a screenplay by Mark Boal. The 2012 film follows a CIA analyst and her team as they try to track down an infamous terrorist leader responsible for a grave terror attack on the United States. Zero Dark Thirty stars Jessica Chastain,...

“Kneecap,” a rollicking look at the titular hip hop trio, will return to theaters in a big way. The indie film, which Sony Pictures Classics released, has grossed over $1 million in the U.S. and nearly $2 million in the U.K., where the Irish rap group has a particularly passionate fanbase. “Kneecap” will get re-released in 154 theaters across the country this coming weekend.

The renewed theatrical push coincides with the band’s return to the States this month for a tour to support their new album, “Fine Art.” It’s a visit that will see the group hit venues in places like Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, Louisville and Washington, D.C.

Bandmembers — Naoise Ó Cairealláin aka Móglaí Bap, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh aka Mo Chara and JJ Ó Dochartaigh aka Dj Provaí — all play themselves in the film. The movie also co-stars Michael Fassbender, Josie Walker, Fionnuala Flaherty, Jessica Reynolds,...

“Every fucking story about Belfast starts like this,” intones rapper and protagonist Naoise Ó Cairealláin in voiceover as cars explode and protestors clash with soldiers in grainy footage. Happily, Kneecap has no truck with such tired tropes. The “mostly true” origin story of the titular rap trio — Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh winningly playing themselves — British-Irish writer-director Rich Peppiatt’s predominantly Irish-language feature bursts with energy, laughs, fizzy filmmaking and a big heart, but never forgets pertinent political point-making.

At its centre, Kneecap is a band origin-story, as childhood pals and drug-dealers Liam and Naoise are inspired to start rapping by local music teacher Ó Dochartaigh, who discovers Naoise’s lyrics during a police interrogation where he acts as an Irish-language translator. Because Kneecap are a real band, the music has an authenticity and vitality that fictional musical biopics rarely replicate. The drug-fuelled recording sessions are riotous,...

‘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...

The winner of this year’s Sundance Audience Award is hitting theaters and, just as the name of the prize suggests, it's bound to be a major delight for viewers. Rich Peppiatt’s Kneecap, a feature debut film about an actual Irish rap band by the same name, is bold, entertaining and boisterous – both as a cinematic piece and as a statement. It is also genuinely hilarious, which isn’t that uncommon for a crowd-pleaser. What is pretty rare though, is that a crowd-pleaser would also happen to be political and unapologetic about it. JJ (JJ Ó Dochartaigh aka DJ Próvai) is a teacher at a Belfast school, leading a nice, comfortable life that leaves him just slightly discontent. His girlfriend Caitlynn (Fionnuala Flaherty), an activist fighting...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

The Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) has selected Rich Peppiatt’s Kneecap as Ireland’s representative in the Oscars international feature film category for the 2025 awards.

UK-born, Belfast-based filmmaker Peppiatt directs the music biopic of Belfast rap trio Kneecap, that stars the real-life band alongside a cast including Michael Fassbender, Simone Kirby, Josie Walker, Fionnuala Flaherty, Jessica Reynolds and Adam Best.

The film is set in west Belfast in 2019, when fate brings Belfast schoolteacher JJ into the orbit of Naoise and Liam Óg, who form an Irish-language hip-hop act, and become unlikely figureheads for a civil rights movement to save their mother tongue.

"Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom."...

Michael Fassbender is tapping into his Northern Irish roots for a musical biopic.

Fassbender co-stars in “Kneecap,” based on the eponymous rap group, comprised of Naoise Ó Cairealláin, JJ Ó Dochartaigh, and Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh , who all star in the fictionalized origin story.

The official logline reads: “When fate brings Belfast schoolteacher JJ into the orbit of self-confessed ‘low life scum’ Naoise and Liam Og, the needle drops on a hip hop act like no other.”

Fassbender plays Cairealláin’s onscreen dad Arlo, with Simone Kirby as his mother Dolores. Of course, the Kneecap crew all take on different stage monikers, with Cairealláin as Móglaí Bap, Dochartaigh as Dj Provaí, and Hannaidh as Mo Chara.

“Kneecap” charts how the rap group of the same name became part of a campaign to save the Irish language in Northern Ireland. As the official press statement included, since Kneecap raps in their native Irish language,...

"You speak Irish, but you don't understand the language." Let's go!! WildCard Distr. in the UK has revealed the official trailer for a killer, unforgettable, energetic new rap musical film from Ireland called Kneecap. It premiered at Sundance earlier this year and received near universal acclaim (it ended up on my Top 10 Best of the Fest list). This film is legit! So good! Based on the origin story of the riotous and ground-breaking Irish-language rap trio Kneecap, the film stars the band's original members Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí in their acting debuts alongside Oscar-nominated actor Michael Fassbender, with Simone Kirby, Jessica Reynolds, Fionnuala Flaherty, and Josie Walker. Set in west Belfast in 2019, it chronicles how fate brings the trio together and how they then go on to "change the sound of Irish music forever". Winner of the Next Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival 2024. I'm a...

On the heels of its premiere to critical acclaim at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the film Kneecap on the Irish rap trio of the same name has been slated for release by Sony Pictures Classics in theaters nationwide on August 2, when it will open against Columbia Pictures’ family film Harold and the Purple Crayon.

The first Irish-language film to bow out of Sundance, where it landed the Next Audience Award, pic stars Naoise Ó Cairealláin aka Móglaí Bap, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh aka Mo Chara and JJ Ó Dochartaigh aka DJ Provaí as themselves, all making their acting debuts. Others in the cast include Josie Walker, Fionnuala Flaherty, Jessica Reynolds, Adam Best, Simone Kirby and Michael Fassbender.

When fate brings Belfast schoolteacher JJ into the orbit of self-confessed “lowlife scum” Naoise and Liam Og, the needle drops on a hip hop act like no other. Rapping in their native Irish language,...

“Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom,” says Arlo (Michael Fassbender), a member of the Irish Republican Army who learned Irish Gaelic during a stint in prison, to his son Naoise and the youngster’s best friend, Liam. It’s a phrase that would stick with the pair—who’d go on to become two-thirds of the rap group Kneecap—far more than any of the warnings they’d get from the police, or “peelers” as they unaffectionately call them, as well as members of the paramilitary group Radical Republicans Against Drugs.

Rich Peppiatt’s Kneecap follows cheeky youths from North Ireland whose passion for rapping nearly matches their unabashed hatred of the Brits and their powerful lackeys for oppressing the Irish people and suppressing the use of Irish Gaelic. Despite the verisimilitude the film garners from its risky and ultimately brilliant decision to have Naoise,...

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival has its first major sale, and for arguably the wildest feature in the lineup.

“Kneecap,” the raucous comedy biopic about the Irish rap group and co-starring Michael Fassbender, has been picked up Sony Pictures Classics, which has acquired all rights to the title for North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Middle East.

The film, the debut feature of director Rich Peppiatt and the first Irish-language feature to play Sundance, premiered on Thursday night at the Prospector Square Theater to critical acclaim, after which the band played a set at the after-party at The Cabin on Main Street. The three-piece also brought along a Northern Irish police van for a stunt ahead of the first screening.

“Kneecap” follows the emergence of the riotous rap trio in post-Troubles Belfast, setting the stage for the Irish language’s resurgence against the establishment. Self-proclaimed “low life scum” Liam Óg and Naoise,...

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North American and multiple territories on Rich Peppiatt’s Kneecap, about the Irish-language hip hop band.

‘Kneecap’: Sundance Review

SPC also picked up Latin America, Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Middle East in a deal which closed prior to Thursday’s world premiere in the Next section, which was followed by a live set on Main Street.

Kneecap stars the band themselves – Naoise Ó Cairealláin aka “Móglaí Bap”, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh aka “Mo Chara”, Jand J Ó Dochartaigh aka “Dj Provaí” – alongnside Josie Walker, Fionnuala Flaherty, Jessica Reynolds, Adam Best, with Simone Kirby and Michael Fassbender.

Dónall Ó Héalai plays a neurodivergent man marooned in the adult world when his mother dies in this quietly promising Irish-language film

This is a quietly promising Irish Gaelic-language drama that features strong work from Dónall Ó Héalai as John, a handsome neurodivergent loner in the Connemara mountains who defies the expected categories: neither a victim, nor a holy fool. Gauche and often monosyllabic, he’s also quickly amused, embarrassingly horny and possessed of a solidity that seems to emanate from the land itself.

Twenty-eight-year-old John finds himself marooned in the adult world and in desperate need of direction when his mother dies suddenly. The “little God”, as a family friend puts it, raised by his parents is barely able to look after himself – let alone deal with being pestered by a local entrepreneur keen to scoop up his family’s land in order to put a windfarm there. After...

Loneliness and longing are examined with a forensic and unflinching eye in “Shelter,” a bleak Irish-language drama about a reclusive 20-something man-child who must face the world he has been protected from all his life. but its intensity and refusal to indulge in sentimentality makes it sometimes tough to watch. Adapted from the 2013 novel “The Thing About December” by Donal Ryan, “Shelter” marks a promising debut by writer-director Sean Breathnach and has been selected as Ireland’s official submission for the 2022 international feature Oscar.

The basic outline of “Shelter” echoes films such as Werner Herzog’s “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser” and Rolf de Heer’s “Bad Boy Bubby,” in which young adult males are suddenly thrust into the world after being cruelly locked away from it all their lives. In “Shelter” it is not imprisonment but willing acceptance of overwhelming parental love that has kept John Cunliffe (Donal O...

"It's time to stop living like a ghost." An early trailer is available for the award-winning Irish film Shelter, originally known as Foscadh, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Seán Breathnach. This premiered at the 2021 Galway Film Festival, and was just selected as Ireland's submission to the Academy Awards for this year. Set in the mountains of contemporary Connemara, Foscadh is a feature film telling the story of gormless recluse John Cunliffe. When his over-cosseting parents pass away, John inherits mountain land that is in the way of a lucrative wind-farm development and he is forced to navigate the choppy waters of courtship, trust and vengeance for the first time. The film stars Dónall Ó Héalaí, Cillian Ó Gairbhí, Fionnuala Flaherty, Macdara Ó Fátharta, and Diarmuid de Faoite. This is described as "a poignant meditation on isolation, neurodiversity, and letting go of the past." No surprise - it looks pretty damn good.

The Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) has picked Irish-Language feature Foscadh (Shelter) as this year’s entry for the International Oscar race.

Written and directed by Seán Breathnach, the pic stars Dónall Ó Héalai (Arracht), Fionnuala Flaherty (An Klondike), and Cillian O’Gairbhí (Blood) in a story based on characters in Donal Ryan’s novel The Thing About December. The plot follows naïve recluse John Cunliffe who is suddenly propelled into manhood at the age of 28. When his overprotective parents pass away, friendless John inherits mountain land that is in the way of a lucrative wind-farm development, and he is forced to navigate the choppy waters of romance, trust and vengeance for the first time.

Producer is Paddy Hayes (Cumar: A Galway Rhapsody), whose father Tom Hayes was nominated for an Oscar 50 years ago for the documentary Cradle Of Genius. The film is produced by Hayes’ Magamedia and premiered at...