‘Everybody to Kenmure Street’ Review: A Timely Document of Scottish Neighbors Standing Up to Immigration Raids

As images of Ice raids and reactionary protests dominate global headlines, Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary “Everybody to Kenmure Street” acts as a vital contextualization of Scottish history and of recent community action in the face of uniformed overreach. Chronicling an impromptu demonstration in 2021 in a sleepy Glasgow enclave, the film wields its combination of archival footage, re-enactments, social media clips and contemporary interviews to highlight the fabric of a neighborhood coming together to protect two of its own, while tensions build between the people and state.

Five minutes can be an eternity in montage time, but the movie’s lengthy introduction is a daring announcement of historical scope. Its opening frames — of old photographs of suffragettes, sketched maps of slave routes and TV footage of ’70s union rallies against the Thatcher government — help couch its modern (and distinctly ordinary) citizenry within the kind of extraordinary political traditions and sordid histories we all secretly possess.