Everybody To Kenmure Street to open Glasgow Film Festival 2026
Felipe Bustos Sierra's documentary on Glaswegians' successful stand against a Home Office deportation van will kick off this year's Glasgow Film Festival
It's one of the most iconic images of the past decade – an immigration detention van on a tenemented southside street, completely encircled by hundreds of everyday Glaswegians. Everybody to Kenmure Street, a new documentary telling the story behind those images, will kick off this year's Glasgow Film Festival.
Everybody to Kenmure Street documents the spontaneous community action against a Home Office deportation raid on the eponymous Pollokshields street on 13 May 2021. As two of their neighbours were targeted for detention, hundreds of locals headed to Kenmure Street to block the roads and stop their removal. The film is made up of archive footage, interviews, verbatim testimonies, and video captured by protesters and onlookers on the day, with a new score by Mogwai's Barry Burns.
Everybody to Kenmure Street is directed by Glasgow-based filmmaker Felipe Bustos Sierra. Sierra's previous doc Nae Pasaran – telling the story of the Rolls-Royce workers in East Kilbride who refused to work on planes bound for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile – closed the 2018 Glasgow Film Festival and went on to win Best Feature at that year's BAFTA Scotland awards. In the GFF announcement, Bustos Sierra describes ...Kenmure Street as "a snapshot of a day, of a neighbourhood, and of gestures repeated through time, for the right to have a voice and to live in peace."
He says: "Glasgow's long history of civil disobedience and meaningful change has been a barometer throughout the making of this film. I cannot wait to watch it at the GFT with its hometown audience, for whom we can only hope it'll be a joyful reminder of what a beacon they can be in uncertain times."
Glasgow Film Festival 2026 closes with James McAvoy's directorial debut California Schemin'; tickets for the opening and closing screenings go on sale on Mon 19 Jan at 10am via glasgowfilm.org. The full GFF 2026 programme will be revealed on 21 Jan, with the festival running from 25 Feb to 6 Mar.
Everybody To Kenmure Street plays at GFT on 25 Feb as the opening film of the 2026 Glasgow Film Festival, and is released in UK cinemas on 13 Mar by CONIC