The Belfast rappers’ riotous semi-biopic adds an Irish-language twist to a sub-genre that ranges from 8 Mile and Straight Outta Compton to Patti Cake$

The list of hip-hop acts who have starred in their own biopic is a short one, and it has perhaps its unlikeliest entry in Kneecap. The spiky Belfast trio’s pro-republican protest rap – much of it pointedly in the Irish language – has made them cult figures on home turf, and comedian turned film-maker Rich Peppiatt’s ebullient film, simply titled Kneecap, aims to do the same internationally. Avoiding a lot of self-important biographical tropes as it depicts their scrappy rise to fame and lays out their blunt political principles, it could easily be mistaken for fiction, with its knockabout tone and heightened comedy, though that just helps it as a mythmaking exercise. As in much of rap culture, being a little larger than life is the point.