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Felipe Bustos Sierra’s “Everybody to Kenmure Street” is a powerful portrait of a neighborhood rallying around two of itself against injustice. The film depicts the 2021 protests in the Pollokshields area of Glasgow, in which citizens took to the streets to protest the detention of two men for alleged immigration violations who were released after eight hours. But even though all the events took place in one day, Sierra realized that the story of the film started much earlier.
Speaking to IndieWire’s Chris O’Falt at our Art of the Doc event in Los Angeles, Sierra explained why the film had to contextualize Glasgow’s long history of social justice activism. Pollokshields is the most diverse area in Scotland, with 86 languages spoken among its residents, and has always been seen as a safe haven for those fleeing persecution. Protests on Kinmore Street may have seemed spur of the moment, but in many ways they were the result of people’s connection to their city’s history.
“It came out of all those early conversations, myself not seeing possibility or hope. When I asked people ‘what made you take to the street?,’ ‘what made you take your body to the street?,’ which was necessary, they often talked about how they had no hope either. But they had that special connection to the history of Glasgow,” said Sierra about the origin of the film. It was always a struggle to fight for women’s rights, civil rights, queer rights, housing conditions, working conditions. With this humanity, we had to find a way to put it in the film. In fact it was a very spontaneous protest. This was the first complaint of many people who appeared. But this spread of knowledge was about history, about care, and that came out clearly. ”
Watch the full conversation with Sierra in the video above.
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