Knuckle

2011 History [Nf]

The Travellers are a band of Irish people linked by family and often living apart from the larger community. While the various clans of Travellers are traditionally united by blood or marriage, that doesn't mean they all get along, and filmmaker Ian Palmer explores one long-running feud and how it plays itself out in this documentary. The Quinn McDonagh family and the Joyce family are cousins, but they've also been fighting among themselves for generations, long enough that the basis of their anger is no longer clear in anyone's mind. The two families regularly attempt to settle their disagreements through brutal bare-knuckle boxing contests, in which few moves are forbidden and the strongest man wins. For years, that man has been James Quinn McDonagh, a gifted pugilist who can defeat nearly anyone, but after losing interest in fighting James leaves the job of defending his family's honor to someone else. That responsibility falls to his younger brother, Michael Quinn McDonagh, who wants a chance to prove himself after a humiliating loss to Big Joe Joyce several years before. Big Joe enjoys sending abusive messages to the Quinn McDonagh family, prompting more fights and perpetuating a cycle of violence that seems unlikely to end. Filmed over a period of twelve years, Knuckle was an official selection at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. more..

Director: Ian Palmer

Reviews

  • Chock full of larger-than-life characters, it's an enthralling insight into a raw, bloodied world.

    David Parkinson - Empire

    28 May 2013

  • Knuckle is the real deal, with the strapping, brutally human Traveller clans butting heads with not only one another but with the very future of their subculture's existence.

    Marc Savlov - Austin Chronicle

    28 May 2013

  • Thick-necked, booze-loving and angry men beat each other with their naked fists: so far, so Irish. But the feuding clans in the documentary Knuckle actually think their habits of antagonizing one another can be fixed by just one more problem-solving brawl.

    Kyle Smith - New York Post

    28 May 2013

  • Palmer keeps his focus tightly on the families, which makes the movie admirably unpretentious but also incomplete. Nevertheless, the picture has a vibrant central character in James McDonagh, the leading fighter in the clan who begins to question the rites of violence.

    Stephen Farber - The Hollywood Reporter

    28 May 2013

  • For all their brutality, the fights are so seductive and exciting that their consequences - the physical and mental toll exacted from the men and their families - sometimes fail to register.

    Scott Tobias - NPR

    28 May 2013

Awards

  • Best Documentary

    Irish Film and Television Awards (2012)