THE STORY – Glasgow residents abandon their routines to gather on Kenmure Street upon learning authorities plan to deport their neighbors, sparking a powerful, impromptu grassroots movement.
THE CAST – Emma Thompson, Kate Dickie & Keira Lucchesi
THE TEAM – Felipe Bustos Sierra (Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 95 Minutes
On the morning of Thursday, May 13, 2021, a Home Office van pulled onto Kenmure Street in Pollokshields, Glasgow, with “Immigration Enforcement” printed in large letters on its side. Inside were two Muslim men dragged out of their home during the celebration of Eid. They had lived in this community for ten years, in the most diverse part of Scotland. Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary “Everybody to Kenmure Street” tracks what that raid set off in a charged film about what it means to come together as a community.
Sierra builds it from talking-head interviews with residents, some of whom have lived on the street for many years. They start with the ordinary: what they were doing that morning and how they planned to spend the day. Then a commotion pulled them out of their routine, and they opened their curtains to find the van. They texted people they knew and went online to document it. They ran into the street to see for themselves. One woman remembers thinking, what’s the worst that could happen? She expected a quick visit. It became an hours-long protest. People stopped what they were doing and stayed, and you can tell from the way they talk that something changed in them that day. Witnesses call the scene dystopian, and it was unfolding right outside their doorstep.
The film is built on footage the residents shot themselves. Filming injustice as it happens has become a defining habit of our era, and here it does most of the work. The material is so rich that Sierra and editor Colin Monie hardly need to do more than shape it. The interviews add an intimate, personal layer, and the balance between the two is well constructed. Some of the best moments split the screen or cut between two or more phone cameras covering the same scene, giving a fuller view of the action. The film also wisely gathers perspectives from other Muslim immigrants as well as Scots.
As people sat down to stop the van from moving, more police arrived. One brave man lay beneath the van, and if it weren’t for him, it would have left. His stand bought enough time for the whole community to gather in force. Neighbors brought blankets, food, and water, and some went around with garbage bags so the street wouldn’t turn into a mess. The bus shelter became a supply station. One interviewee calls it an act of care around a broader act of care. For every officer who turned up, dozens of ordinary citizens did, chanting “we won’t leave” and “let them go,” and they stayed until the men in the van were released.
It was also peaceful, so peaceful that a mosque down the street opened its doors so both police and protesters could use the bathroom. Then both sides went back outside and formed their lines again, which is a bit comedic to think about. Most of the protesters holding their line had just spent a month fasting, so they could go on for a long time. What happened to those two men was a disgusting abuse of power, and the regular folks who stood against it refused to let it stand. And in turn, they deserve admiration.
The film’s smartest choice is how it treats the people at the center. “The van man,” who lay under the vehicle, preferred to stay anonymous, so Emma Thompson steps in to relay his experience in his own words. It’s a pleasant surprise, and it gives his story greater weight than a sitting talking head could have. Her voice over the footage and her performance add context to the images. Another anonymous subject, an off-duty nurse who sat beside the van out of concern for the man underneath it, is voiced by Kate Dickie. The two men taken from their home are never seen during their interview. We only hear them, and nobody plays them, which is the right call, because an actor could have had the opposite effect, where a performance could have diminished the effect of their words.
The tension never lets up. You can feel the van shift on the man below as the people inside move around, and any outbreak of chaos could mean real danger. There are moments between police and protesters where you wonder how far things might go, and a continuous worry that a riot could break out. There’s also a sense of hopelessness as arrests begin and cars are hauled away while protesters can only watch. Even when victory feels close, everything seems like it could backfire. Still, no one backs down. The film is so full of the energy of justice that it makes you want to get up and fight for what is right too. The residents’ accounts show how emotional the day was, and how sharing it with a whole community changed them.
The work does stumble in a few places. The talking heads aren’t named, which leaves a gap in connection, and it’s hard to attach these voices to the people in the street at times. The film also detours into Scotland’s ties to Atlantic slavery, foreign labor, and the plantation economy, told through black-and-white archival footage. The footage adds some irony, but it’s a lot of history to rush through before returning to the protest, and it feels out of place. Stories of other protests in Scottish history, which reinforce the country’s heart for justice, fit more comfortably. Then there’s the choral singing laid over a heated moment in the protest, which creates distance just when you want to be closest to what’s happening.
The relevance of “Everybody to Kenmure Street” is hard to miss. It echoes ICE in the US. As I write this, a clip of Donald Trump plays on the news where he refers to Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in Michigan’s 2026 Senate race, as a jihadist. A Muslim man in the film says Muslims and other non-white people could live in the UK for hundreds of years and never be considered British by the establishment, and the same could be said everywhere. That’s what makes this citizen journalism so valuable. “Everybody to Kenmure Street” shows that when ordinary people stop what they’re doing and show up for their neighbors, with nothing but their bodies, their phones, and a willingness to stay, they can change what a government thinks it can get away with, and what the rest of us believe we can do.
