Everybody to Kenmure Street (12A)
Directed by Felipe Bustos Sierra
⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

KENMURE STREET was a moment; a moment in the history of Glasgow, a moment of organisation, a moment of radicalism, a moment for the big talk, a moment for the actions big and small that make a victory.

It was also a moment that lasted all day. Somehow, in just 90 minutes or so Everyone to Kenmure Street manages to shows how a Home Office dawn raid to cart off two men went both horribly wrong and wonderfully right.

It is the story of the person who lodged themselves under the Home Office van to buy just enough time for the neighbour and friends to buy yet more time, spreading the word through refugee defence networks, through social media, until a couple of thousand people of all ages, colours and creeds made a joyous, raucous, impassable barrier of themselves.

A concoction of footage from phones on the day and a few talking heads could have been dull, but not this. Stories flowed minute by minute, echoing that same tension that built through the day as the police numbers grew and rumours of a charge circulated.

What was missing was just as important as what was there.

To those of us who were there or know the ecosystem of Glaswegian activism, many of the faces will be familiar, but no names are given on screen (until the end credits) — this was the most collective of efforts.

Footage is interspersed with the speaking in the darkness of the two held hostage in the Home Office van. No translation is given for ignoramuses like me, but none needed.

And all the way, hope and love and steel is on display as people shared food and water on Eid to sustain them until the final moments when a lawyer negotiated the release.

Felipe Bustos Sierra — the director who gave us Nae Pasaran — knows nothing happens without context though. Opening with the radical history of the Red Clyde, the circle closes with that lawyer exchanging a glance with a Kenmure St resident whose father had helped steer the UCS work-in.

As the titles roll, a voice echoes down the street telling us “Today will change the framing of asylum and immigration.” We’ll see.

In the meantime, go and see this.

Remind yourself that victory through solidarity isn’t something consigned to history books or grainy grey images of the past, but something that can live and breathe in glorious technicolour, now.

In cinemas March 13