Just a couple of years after An Cailín Ciúin was shortlisted for the best international feature film Oscar, it appears Ireland might once again be in the running for this prestigious accolade.
As per recent forecasts listed in the industry publication Variety, Kneecap – Ireland’s contender for the 97th Academy Awards – has a good chance of securing a nomination.
The road to the announcement on the 17th January is long. The initial 86 entries need to be reduced to a list of 15 before a final five nominees are determined, and many deserving films miss out each year.
This underscores the achievement of Colm Bairéad’s An Cailín Ciúin/The Quiet Girl, which claimed Ireland’s first nomination for the Academy’s best foreign language film category in 2023. Only one other Irish film, Paddy Breathnach’s Spanish Language Film Viva in 2015, had even reached the shortlist.
Ireland’s delayed endeavour to highlight Irish-language cinema has culminated in a modest 11 submissions so far, where only seven are primarily in Irish. The country’s inaugural submission only happened in 2007.
Kneecap’s partially fictional tale of a rap trio from Belfast, as constructed by writer-director Rich Peppiatt, has a good chance of reaching the Dolby Theatre in March. It would be a tremendous accomplishment, not only for the creators but also for an Irish film industry that has finally woken up to the power of the vernacular.
Kneecap’s funding is an amalgamation from Northern Ireland Screen, the Irish Language Broadcast Fund, Screen Ireland, the BFI (with National Lottery funding), Coimisiún na Meán and TG4, among others, which importantly, can only be attained with adequate government support.
Regardless of the final result, the greatest pleasure in this Oscar buzz may be the striking dissimilarity between An Cailín Ciúin, an expertly narrated tale of benevolence and heartbreaking loss that gently emerges through soft, peaceful instances, and the side-splitting, riotous, rebellious film Kneecap, often labelled as a “high-octane” movie. Both capture the heart, yet it’s clear that Ireland is far from repetitive in creating Irish-language cinemas. This fact alone could greatly uplift our artistic stature in the film industry.