Everybody to Kenmure Street Review

Protest is joy in the wonderful Everybody to Kenmure Street, a cinematic documentary in celebration of a thwarted a dawn raid.

In 2021, the morning of Eid in the Pollokshields area of Glasgow, one of Scotland’s most diverse communities, was disrupted by the arrival of a Home Office van emblazoned with ‘Immigration Enforcement’. Two men who had lived in Scotland for ten years – Sumit Sehdev and Lakhvir Singh – were to be forcibly removed from their homes in a notorious dawn raid and deported while most people were starting work or school. Eight hours later, the van, still parked in the middle of Kenmure St with the detainees inside, flanked by tens of police officers, was surrounded by thousands of local protesters refusing to let two of their own be snatched.

Sierra has pieced together the events of 13 May 2021 through videos taken by those in attendance. First, a few curious locals convene outside their homes, suspicious of something nefarious afoot. Then, the progressively minded arrive after a text alert is sent to a local activist network. Hours later, the crowd has swelled to the length and breadth of the entire block, unmoving and defiant, outnumbering the law enforcement gang considerably. 

Joy is a crucial aspect of the film’s DNA. You are welcome to smile alongside the interviewees who reminisce on the day fondly. The elation when it is announced Sehdev and Singh are to be let go matches that of winning the World Cup. The film never labours the point, but happiness is clearly presented as a byproduct of empathy and caring for one another. 

Everyone showed up on the day equipped with eyes and a camera phone (and plentiful water and packets of crisps). One interviewee remembers how they felt in the morning, believing their presence would achieve nothing, but they would at least be witness to something. By afternoon, everyone in Scotland – this writer included – had stopped what they were doing to tune into live feeds from Kenmure Street on Facebook and Instagram. We shared the protester’s sentiment: acts of community resistance like this rarely end well, but documenting them feels vital, and so watching felt dutiful. In turning the events of the day into a documentary feature, Sierra is extending a hand in solidarity to the rest of the world to join in bearing witness to what happened on Kenmure St. 

Everybody to Kenmure Street has no hang-ups about being a protest film. No voice is given to ‘the other side’. No immigration officers or elected officials give their version of events. It is said in the film nothing radicalises you like being hit with a policeman’s baton, and Everybody to Kenmure Street itself is radicalising material. If you were left feeling galvanised yet powerless by The Voice of Hind Rajab, a harrowing docudrama about a young girl killed in Gaza, this documentary is an example of what you can do right now for your neighbour. 

The Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where Everybody to Kenmure Street received its world premiere, is thousands of miles from Glasgow, but the actions in the film echo those taken by neighbourhoods in America today in response to ICE raids. Indeed, the film contextualises the events of Kenmure St within a great legacy of protest and progressivism in the wider world, and Glasgow especially. In 2005, a group of school girls, who came to be known as The Glasgow Girls, campaigned against dawn raids after one of their friends was taken. One of the group, Roza Salih, contributes to the film and was present at Kenmure St, coming to symbolise how little has changed: the immigration raids continue to violate communities, and Glasgow’s people continue to show up for those in need. 

The film’s local focus speaks to the international soul searching taking place among cities in imperialist nations. It is noted Glasgow likes to think of itself as anti-racist and radical, but it was built by profits from the slave trade. Kenmure St itself gets its name from a house built using wealth from plantations. You are left wondering if one informs the other, a citizenry aware of its city’s dark history, atoning by resisting the conservatism of the state. 

One of the detained men recalls his time in the van through voiceover. An immigration officer sitting close to him asked: “Who are you? Who are you that all these people have gathered here?” He replied, “I’m nobody. I’m normal.” Namelessness and facelessness recur in the film. None of the on-screen interviewees from Pollokshields are introduced by name. We understand them to be normal people whose identities are not as important as their collective spirit, in this instance.

Most didn’t even know who Sehdev and Singh were. One of the first people on the scene on the morning of 13 May was ‘van man’ – an activist who crawled under the vehicle and held tight to one of its axles until the stand-off was over – who wore a mask the whole time, and is represented in the film by a famous face stand-in instead. It’s a film about ‘us’ as a concept, an energy, a guiding principle. 

Everybody to Kenmure Street is a neat archive of footage that, when assembled by Sierra, evokes cinema’s great sieges. The sight of a community surrounding law enforcement is awesome to behold: the shock of fluorescent police garb is outflanked and surrounded by citizens forming a protective ring around Sehdev and Singh. The day was mostly free of physical aggression but it was no less a war of willpower, not to mention a chest-pumping display of how many more of ‘us’ there are than ‘them’. With his found footage, Sierra makes visual the power of the people. He has immortalised Kenmure St for a reason: when hope is in short supply, remember what we can achieve together – and don’t forget how good it feels either. Everybody to Kenmure Street is a mission statement to love thy neighbour and, if called upon, defend them too. 

Everybody To Kenmure Street will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22-31, 2026. In the U.K., the documentary will open the Glasgow Film Festival on February 25.