Everybody to Kenmure Street - GFF2026 Review

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Everybody to Kenmure Street – GFF2026 Review

Everybody to Kenmure Street – Documentary by Felipe Bustos Sierra

Felipe Bustos Sierra is a Glasgow based, BAFTA winning documentarian; his powerful film ‘Everybody To Kenmure Street’ opened Glasgow Film Festival 2026. The film recreates the spontaneous response by neighbours and activists who came together in this multi-cultural community in Glasgow’s Pollokshields on 13 May 2021. Their mission was to stop two residents being deported by the UK’s Home Office in a ‘Dawn Raid’.

The Home Office officials expected to detain two Indian men, who had lived in Glasgow for ten years. Instead they were met with collective action by a crowd infuriated by this hostile act against their neighbours. The fact that the Dawn Raid was carried out on EID did not go unnoticed by the community, many of whom should have been celebrating the end of fasting for Ramadan but instead were sitting in a road.

The film begins one morning in the early hours when neighbours are disturbed by a commotion in their close. From their window they could see a van with a huge logo “Immigration Enforcement“. The response was immediate, doors were knocked and calls went out “Everybody to Kenmure Street”; Glasgow’s activist networks were alerted and hundreds of people left their homes and workplaces and rushed to the area to join local people protesting against their neighbours’ deportation. In an act of complete impulse one man dived under the Home Office van and hung on to the axle to prevent the vehicle moving. He stayed there for eight hours. Emma Thompson (an Executive Producer) plays the part of the heroic “Van Man”. ‘My words but not my face’.

Police arrived and circled the crowd and the van, where the men were held for eight hours. At its peak over 3000 people were estimated to be in Kenmure Street. The film captures the intensity of the standoff with the police and the Home Office with protestors chanting ‘Let Them Go’ as police vans lined up and closed off the area.

Aamer Anwar, a celebrated human rights lawyer, was called to the scene to intervene and negotiate the release of the two men. He pointed out to the police that there were two choices: release the men without charge or face a riot similar to the Toxteth or Brixton Riots in England. This led to the two men being let go.

The film uses actual footage from the event and commentary from some of those, who took part on the day. It captures the power of civil resistance and people looking out for one another. A makeshift café sprang up in a bus shelter with food being donated and offered free to everyone. The solidarity among the protestors was palpable and the sense of victory powerful as they achieved their aim and saw the men set free.

The filmmaker very effectively cuts the film with footage of protests in Glasgow throughout the years: the Rent strikes 1915, Jimmy Reid and the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders; the Glasgow Girls; Lee Jeans factory occupation; Govanhill Baths occupation and the Nelson Mandela ‘Freedom of the City” event in George Square. These earlier protests demonstrate the power of direct action against injustice. Some of the protestors who joined forces with local people were seasoned activists and Kenmure Street will be added to the stories of civic resistance in Glasgow.

But Glasgow has a complex history and a further element is added when the history of the name Kenmure Street is explained with its links to the slave trade; and how the wealth of Glasgow’s city merchants was built off the back of enslaved people, particularly in the tobacco industry.

The outcome of the Kenmure Street protest was a positive one for the protesters and the subjects of the raid. But as one of the key activists in the film points out it is not always like this. The UK Conservative Government at the time and the current Labour Government operates a hostile policy towards those seeking asylum in our country with many people in the asylum system having to constantly be on the alert. Glasgow has a history of welcoming refugees but five years on from Kenmure Street people are swamped by the anti-immigrant message of Reform in the media and they are not immune to propaganda.

In contrast to much of the misinformation we are subjected to ‘Everybody To Kenmure Street’ is a factual and accurate account. It is an important and powerful film, perhaps forcing contemplation on how you would feel if the door of your home, where you had lived in harmony with your neighbours for many years, was broken down at dawn.

(Everybody to Kenmure Street has already won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Civil Resistance at Sundance. Felipe Bustos Sierra’s prizewinning Nae Pasaran! Was the closing film at GFF2018)

Glasgow Film Festival 2026 continues until 8 March, 2026

Lily McColgan, 25 February, 2026