EXCLUSIVE: ICE raids have triggered alarm in many communities across the U.S. – from LA to Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Boston, and more. Protests have sprung up in many of those places after immigration roundups, but for a model of proactive response, there’s the example of Glasgow, Scotland.
On the 13th of May, 2021, the UK’s Home Office sent agents out at dawn with orders to grab two Indian men, but what happened next is becoming a legend and a case study. The story is told in Everybody to Kenmure Street, a documentary directed by Felipe Bustos Sierra that won a Special Jury Award for Civil Resistance at the Sundance Film Festival.
We have your first look at the film in the trailer above. Icarus Films just announced it has acquired North American rights to the film in a deal negotiated with The Party Film Sales. The U.S. theatrical release date has not yet been revealed.
An aerial view of Kenmure Street in Glasgow, Scotland on May 13, 2021.
Icarus Films
Oscar winner Emma Thompson not only serves as an executive producer of the documentary, but she also appears in it. In the trailer, she can be seen crawling underneath an immigration paddy wagon, recreating one of the tactics used by Kenmure neighbors to flummox officers.
“Everybody to Kenmure Street beautifully and powerfully demonstrates the innate and deep decency of our people whilst also highlighting the institutional mannerisms and structures that are the opposite of this,” Thompson said in a statement. “It’s a documentary about what we as society often do not see, but what we can do when we do see it. I’m excited to be supporting Felipe with this urgent film.”
A protest on Kenmure Street in Glasgow, Scotland on May 13, 2021.
Icarus Films
A description of the documentary notes, “The morning in Glasgow, the first day of Eid, started as any other. However, when neighbors heard through community message networks that two local men were snatched up for deportation, hundreds of people left their daily lives to rush down to Kenmure Street and put their bodies on the line. Though mostly strangers and with almost no planning, this extremely diverse group organized themselves, taking on essential roles to allow the collective to achieve their goal: protecting their own from government forces going after the most vulnerable among them.
“An inspiring and profoundly moving portrait of what ‘normal’ citizens are capable of in the face of injustice, Everybody to Kenmure Street reminds us of the power that is always inherent in the people.”
Director Felipe Bustos Sierra at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2026 in Park City, Utah.
Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
Bustos Sierra is a Chilean-Belgian filmmaker who is based in Scotland.
“I am the son of a Chilean exile. My early life was filled with stories of what was lost – countries, people, ideals. This film is an act of recovery, and about the quiet, invisible lines that connect one act of resistance to another, across time. As someone says on the day; ‘sometimes all you need to be is a link in the chain,’” he writes in a director’s statement. “In Everybody to Kenmure Street, I am not trying to explain. I am trying to remember, preserve and rebuild. It’s not a film with heroes, but with presence, with voices that echo through each other. It’s a film about being present, being in the street, being together, being human.”
Everybody to Kenmure Street is set to screen at numerous film festivals in the coming week:
Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival, March 25-29
MSP International Film Festival Minneapolis, April 8-19
Boulder International Film Festival, April 9-12
Wisconsin Film Festival, April 9-16
Miami Film Festival, April 9-19
Filmfest DC, April 16-26
Doc10 Film Festival, May 1-3
Mountainfilm Telluride, May 21-25
cineSPEAK Under the Stars Festival, May 29
Watch the trailer above for Everybody To Kenmure Street.