The Glasgow Film Festival 2026 opened yesterday with a documentary detailing one of the most powerful moments in the city’s recent history: the attempted Home Office immigration dawn raid on Kenmure Street in Pollokshields in May 2021, and the spontaneous mass protest that followed.
Directed by BAFTA-winning filmmaker Felipe Bustos Sierra, Everybody to Kenmure Street was produced by the local production company led by Barry Crerar, with Emma Thompson serving as executive producer. The film employs crowd-sourced footage and archival material alongside dramatised sequences to reconstruct the events, celebrating the collective action that unfolded in one of Glasgow’s most multicultural areas.
The documentary is quick to establish Glasgow’s deeply rooted history of multiculturalism, drawing connections between the city’s industrial past and later protest movements of the twentieth century. Combining powerful eyewitness testimony with footage captured on the day, the film is emotionally affecting from its opening moments. Through anecdotes from people of different ages, identities, religions, and ethnicities, it foregrounds some of the most admired qualities of Glasgow’s communities: resilience, solidarity, and collective resistance in the face of injustice.
As the narrative unfolds, testimony from those with protected identities lends the film its emotional core. From the now-infamous “van man”, portrayed by Thompson, who clung to the axles of the immigration van, to the nurse who remained by his side throughout the day, and the woman later arrested for obstructing the vehicle’s removal, the viewer is drawn into the deeply personal and courageous decisions made by those present.
Bustos Sierra’s decision to withhold the identities of the two men detained until the closing scenes of their release reinforces the film’s central argument: that such events could happen to anyone – our neighbours, friends, and pillars of the community. By the time the credits rolled, there was scarcely a dry eye in the audience.
Everybody to Kenmure Street is released in cinemas nationwide on 13 March and is well worth watching – just be sure to bring tissues.
Author: Megan Chalmers (she/her, @megsbookpile)
Image credit: Everybody to Kenmure Street (2025) / Copyright: Conic
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