Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Any given movie can be placed somewhere between truth and fiction — just depends on how close a fictionalization sticks to the true story. But when actors play themselves it tends to shift toward the truth side. This week, I’m looking at three great new movies that deal in dramatizations, semi-autobiographies, and fictionalizations. There’s a group of actors in a maximum security prison, some Irish rappers in Belfast, and a Taiwanese-American adolescent in the Bay Area.

Didi (弟弟)

Wri/Dir: Sean Wang

Chris (Izaac Wang) is a preteen schoolboy in Fremont, California in the Bay Area. He lives with his Mom (Joan Chen) his big sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) and his elderly grandmother Nai-nai (Zhang Li Hua). Missing from this picture is his dad who supports the family from his job in their native Taiwan but whom they rarely see in person. Home life is fractious at best — Chris is waging a long war with Vivian, and their practical jokes are getting increasingly extreme. Nai-nai feels isolated and takes out her anger on his mom, while she just tries to keep the family from falling apart. At school and in the streets, Chris’ best bro is Fahad (Raul Dial), who hangs with the rest of their crew. They’re all Asian-Americans — Filipino, Korean, Indian —  but no one else is Taiwanese. He goes to his first house parties, and decides to meet a girl. He has crush on Madi (Mahaela Park) but doesn’t know what to do once they meet. And this is a seminal year. Vivian is heading off to college, and Nai-nai is rapidly aging. His mom pressures him to take  tutoring with her friends’ kids, but he can’t stand that group.

When his first try at dating ends ends up in a fiasco, he feels betrayed by his usual crew. So he tries to make new, cooler friends. He approaches three skaters at a skate park and proposes shooting their videos. He doesn’t know  the first thing about it, but at least he has new friends to hang with. He reinvents himself and hides his ethnicity (I’m half, he says). But as his anger, frustrations, insecurities and self-doubt build up, and his whole life feels uncertain, he doesn’t know which way to turn. Can Chris survive the unbearable pressures of adolescence?

Didi (the title means younger brother in Chinese) is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about Sean Wang’s own life growing up in Fremont in 2008. It feels honest and real, full of the angst and heartbreak of youth. It’s full of myspace and early texting, his computer screens filled with nihilistic accidents and explosions. Something about this movie really hit me; yes it’s a coming-of-age story with many of the expected scenes, but without any of the usual cliches. The acting is all-around great and for a first feature this one’s a real accomplishment.

I quite liked this one.

Sing Sing

Dir: Greg Kwedar

It’s Sing Sing, the infamous, maximum security prison, 30 miles up the river from New York City. Divine G (Coleman Domingo) is a long-time prisoner there, known for his acting and oratory skills, as well as his kind and giving nature. He’s also a star of the plays they put on at the prison. And they’re looking for new participants. Like Clarence “Divine Eye” Macklin (played by himself). Macklin shakes down people in the yard and always displays a tough, gangsta image. But Divine G recognizes his talent and encourages him to join up. And at the same time he’s working on the play, he also helps other prisoners appeal for parole or pardons. He himself was wrongfully convicted, but has less luck than the people he helps. 

Now prisoners don’t just act there, they also direct, come up with the story, and do the production work as well. But despite his efforts to help him, Macklin brushes him off and puts down the acting exercises. This year’s play is made up of a fantastical amalgam of concepts: pirates, aliens, ancient Egyptians, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to name just a few. But obstacles threaten the whole production. Will Divine Eye learn to get along with Divine G?  And can this experimental play work?

Sing Sing is a wonderfully revealing and well-acted drama about people putting on a show while incarcerated. It tells, sequentially, all the stages of putting on a play: auditions, exercises, read- throughs, dress-rehearsals and the show itself. Some of the main characters are played by accomplished actors, like the wonderful Coleman Domingo, and Paul Raci as the director. But co-star Clarence “Divine Eye” Macklin plays himself; the film is based on his own story. Other formerly incarcerated performers play themselves or other prisoners. More than that, it fleshes out the true stories of the characters they play. Some of the actors — huge bruisers with facial tattoos — if you ran into them in a dark alley, you’d probably scream and run away. But they’re actually nice, creative, and intelligent guys who needed something like this. Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) is a highly successful program that gives meaning and purpose to the lives of prisoners. Within three years of being released from prison in New York State, 43% are back behind bars. But for participants in RTA the 3-year recidivism rate is less than 3%. That shows you how important it is.

Despite the desolate, horrific and overcrowded conditions in prisons, this drama will make you feel good about the world again.

Kneecap

Co-Wri/Dir: Rich Peppiatt

(Co-written by Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara)

JJ teaches music and the Irish language to bored students at a public school in West Belfast. He also speaks Irish at home with his girlfriend. They’re interrupted in bed one night by a phone call asking her to translate at the police station. She doesn’t want to, so JJ goes in her stead. The suspect is Liam, a lad in trackies arrested at a rave in the woods, who claims to speak only Irish no English. The detective wants JJ to help with the interrogation. She’s also curious about Liam’s notebook, filled with scrawled poems. Thing is, speaking Irish has a political dimension, too — it’s been an act of rebellion since long before independence from the British. So JJ stealthily sides with Liam, pocketing the book while Liam distracts the detective. JJ loves the rhymes, and wants Liam to rap them, in Irish, to hip hop beats (something never done before). Liam says, never without Naoise, his best pal and business partner.

They’re childhood friends, since Naoise’s IRA dad taught them to speak Irish before he went underground. Now they’re not just besties, they’re the main local dealers in drugs and hallucinogens. They agree to make a go of it, and come up with a name, Kneecap. (Kneecapping was a form of torture and punishment during The Troubles). Naoise calls himself Móglaí Bap, Liam’s handle is Mo Chara, and JJ is DJ Próvai. But he has to hide his face behind an Irish-flag-striped balaclava, or risk losing his job. Their first gig is at a local pub before a handful of old geezers. But word spreads, and soon enough, kids everywhere are copying their rhymes to JJ’s backbeats. 

But not everyone loves them. The police detective is watching them closely, with veiled threats. A vigilante group — Radical Republicans Against Drugs — threaten physical punishment for snorting coke on stage. Naoise’s dad says their performance jeopardizes the cause. And even Liam’s clandestine girlfriend, Georgia — a Protestant no less! — hurls abuse at him as they have passionate sex in her bedroom. Will this Irish rap trio become famous? Or will they die trying?

Kneecap is a fast-moving musical, and a sex-and-drug-filled romp, with a large dose of Irish republican politics. This hilariously fictionalized biopic of the hiphop trio shows the nitty gritty of their sketchy lives. Surprisingly, the three chose to play themselves… and more surprising, they can actually act! They’re good. The rest of the cast are pro actors, including Josie Walker as the cop and Jessica Reynolds as Georgia, Liam’s sex friend. Gerry Adams plays himself, and Michael Fassbender — who was Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s gruelling Hunger — plays a similar role as Naoise’s underground Dad.

The film is stylized in presentation, with lots of cute animated details worked into the live action, plus occasional drug-filled fantasies using claymation. Even the violence — be it from guns or police clubs — is fantasy-like not gruesome. Most of the dialogue, and the rap, is in Irish/Gaelige, a once nearly dead language having a modern renaissance. Now, I don’t speak the language, but still, many of the Irish speakers in the movie sounded like absolute beginners, sounding out the words; but at least the three mains were speaking like it’s their native tongue, which is quite remarkable.

I found Kneecap a lot of fun.

Didi, Sing Sing and Kneecap all open in Toronto at the TIFF Lightbox this weekend; check your local listings.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.