Everybody to Kenmure Street - Review

Two large Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) cinemas were packed out for the Melbourne premiere of Everyone to Kenmure Street, a Glaswegian story of how a community spontaneously mobilised to block an early morning deportation of two Muslim neighbours.

From the quick-thinking person who slid underneath the immigration van, those who sat down around it and started calling and texting everyone, the people filming, bringing out food and water, the local Imam opening the mosque toilets, the human rights lawyer negotiating with police amidst the thousands who filled Kenmure Street we see a step by step account of the 10 hour action told by the people involved.

The film, which won the Special Jury Award for Civil Resistance at this year’s Sundance, captures the rush of escalation and these dynamics of risk so well. For those of us lucky enough to have taken part in successful blockades, pickets or occupations - where the rare joy of experiencing a community using its power mixes with the sickening dread of impending state violence, these would feel familiar. You can see it in the eyes of the people recounting their experiences on that single day. It was only a single day, one of them says, but it meant so much.

Importantly, director Felipe Bustos Sierra places this single day in a much longer timeline of Scottish colonial and working class history, showing how earlier union and anti-immigration resistance can inspire, empower and set the stage for the next wave.

I’ve always been on the look-out for stories of resistance that provide hope, but that are also instructional. Even a small sampling of the vast history of popular struggles around the world, can act as a counterweight to the dominant ‘narrative of inevitability’ that we are bombarded with: that power always wins, capitalist exploitation and injustice is normal, and we are but passive consumers of it all. At this stage in the game we need stories that make our hearts stronger, that can point to that illusive ‘joy’ of resistance, and that show how civil resistance can be a pragmatic, accessible and highly effective politics of ordinary people. Everyone to Kenmure Street is one of those.

Hopefully it will get a cinema run locally and look out for it when it gets to a streamer. It’s also perfect for activist trainings, film and discussion nights and movement prep as anti-immigration politics and deportation infrastructure ramps up in our own communities.

You can book community screenings here.

Watch the trailer on Youtube here.

Anthony Kelly

August 2026