Hot Press talks to Steven Knight about the pulsating Oasis: Don't Look Back In Anger film

It’s the morning after the Venice film premiere night before, and the grin on Steven Knight’s face couldn't be any wider.

“They gave us a ten minute standing ovation; it was absolutely amazing,” enthuses the Oasis: Don't Look Back In Anger writer and creator who’s previously brought us the likes of Peaky Blinders and House Of Guinness. “I was with my family so I only heard about it, but there was quite the party afterwards!”

Was Steven there when pre-Venice, Noel and Liam got to see the finished documentary for the first time?

“We set it all up, I introduced the film – ‘Here we go!’ – and then we left the building as they watched it,” he recalls. “Then we heard they’d had a very emotional reaction to it – in a good way! – which was fantastic. Subsequent to that there were a couple of nicks and tucks, but they were really happy.”

There are some very beautiful, tender moments in the film. Did Steven have to reach for the Kleenex at any time?

“Constantly,” he admits. “I’m pretty bad for that so, yes, I did. Even in Venice, a couple of beers in, I found myself welling up. People around me were sobbing all the way through. It’s quite weird…”

Talking earlier in 2025 to people in the brothers’ orbit, there were genuine fears right up until the first Cardiff gig that hostilities for some reason would resume, and the whole thing would be off. Did Steven share those concerns?

“No, I didn’t,” he says. “I’m not being wise after the event – I think I’m just an idiot! Having spoken to them, I knew how absolutely determined they were that this was going to work. Almost to prove people wrong. ‘It went wrong last time, we ain’t going to do that again.’

“From the moment Liam walked in to rehearsals – which is captured exactly how it happened on film – there’s no high-fives, hugs or tears. He just makes a comment about the drums and says, ‘Shall we do it now, are you ready, are you ready?’ They went, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ and, bang, they did it.”

Liam and Noel at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Photo: Giulia Parmigiani.

Shot with twelve concealed cameras – “We didn’t want to make it feel like surveillance,” notes Knight’s colleague Dylan Southern – the rehearsal footage makes for compulsive viewing. And, musically anyway, confirms Noel as the leader of the band.

“There’s another moment when Liams says something, Noel says something, and they look through everybody else and laugh. You just thought, ‘That’s two brothers again!’ There were stepping stones all the way through.”

As the Gallaghers, Bonehead, Gem Archer, Andy Bell, Joey Waronker and Christian Madden – let us remember that Oasis are a band, not just two people – made their grand Cardiff entrance, what was going through Steven’s mind?

“I was perhaps irrationally confident,” he reveals. “Well, not irrationally because I’d been there for the rehearsals and heard how good they were. They were sounding better than they’d ever sounded before. I knew that bit of it was going to work. What I wasn’t expecting was the emotional reaction of the crowd. And Liam and Noel weren’t expecting that either. Noel had to turn his back on them a few times because he was seeing these fathers and sons/mothers and daughters jumping around together, and getting emotional himself. It was quite overwhelming.”

Noel describes it thusly: "That Oasis generation took our music to their hearts - and gave it to their kids."

Along with the big choreographed set pieces – 'This Is Not Drill!' flashing on to the big screen immediately gets the pulse racing – there are lots of little spontaneous ones which add considerably to Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger’s charm, and underline that it’s as much about the fans as it is the band. Some of my favourites being:

The football terrace chant version of ‘Wonderwall’, rechristened ‘Te Aliento Más Allá del Resultado’, which the San Lorenzo ultras perform mariachi-style before the gig in Buenos Aires.

In similar footballing fashion, Liam getting 50,000-plus fans to do the Poznań – i.e. turn their backs to the stage, link arms and frantically pogo in unison – as they tear intro ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’.

They tears of joy streaming down fans’ faces when, a mere 35 years after forming, Oasis step on to a Korean stage for the first time. The communal singing of ‘Acquiesce’ – “Because we need each other/ We believe in one another/ And I know we’re going to uncover/ What’s sleepin’ in our soul” – could probably have been heard back in Manchester.

Desperate to see their heroes, fans dangling from the tops of trees outside Manchester’s Heaton Park.

A young survivor of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing getting to hear the song that helped her through the trauma, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, live for the first time at that same Heaton Park show.

And that really is just for starters!

Is there anything about their two Croke Park shows that stands out to Steven?

Steven Knight at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Photo: Giulia Parmigiani.

“The song sung by the crowd – ‘The Auld Triangle’ – which Noel and Bonehead were both effected by,” he replies. “Their connection to Ireland is absolutely tangible. Where else would they be so reminded of their childhood because they spent a lot of happy summers there as kids.”

After hanging out with them for the best part of a year, how would Steven describe Liam and Noel’s relationship?

“What characterises it, is that they’re both absolutely honest,” he shoots back. “They will say what they think.”

Which, never mind the consequences, is always highly entertaining.

“Yeah, every time they open their mouths, they say something you could put on a t-shirt,” Knight agrees. “They’re so eloquent. One of Liam’s quotes in the film is ‘You have to really, really care not to give a fuck.’ I don’t know what it means but it’s brilliant!”

Touchingly, Noel observes, "This tour fixed a lot of things. We're in contact way, way, way more than we ever were before... The word I'd use about Liam – and I never, ever thought I'd say this – is 'delightful'!"

Is there anything else Steven learned about Liam and Noel making the film?

“Somebody beforehand said to me: ‘If you have a meeting with them, they’ll be there early and will work really hard’ – and they did,” he concludes. “At rehearsal, they worked and worked and worked until it was right. They have a work ethic which is the opposite to the rock ‘n’ roll cliché.”

Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger is in IMAX® and cinemas now