The Party Film Sales Boards Sundance Doc ‘Everybody To Kenmure Street’ & Unveils First Clip Showing Glasgow Activists Defy Immigration Raid

EXCLUSIVE: The Party Film Sales has acquired world sales rights to timely documentary Everybody to Kenmure Street, about a community’s move to stop two men being detained in a dawn immigration raid, ahead of its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

Directed by Scotland-based Belgian Chilean director Felipe Bustos Sierra, the work reconstructs an infamous incident in one of the most diverse neighborhoods of the Scottish city of Glasgow in 2021, when locals blocked a police-van holding two men earmarked for deportation.

Immigration officers had not expected the neighbors to take notice of the dawn raid, but they did and began sounding the alarm. What started with ten people blocking the van’s path quickly swelled to nearly 2500 citizen activists by the end of the day.

Bustos Sierra, himself steeped in activism culture from his childhood in Chile, has created a Birdseye view of the event, combining crowd-sourced footage and interviews with the protestors. The Party Film Sales has unveiled a first clip to give a taste of the work.

“We are extremely proud to be part of the upcoming journey of Everybody to Kenmure Street. It is a remarkably crafted film, hopeful, moving, intelligent and profoundly political, that resists fatalism and affirms the power of collective action,” said Samuel Blanc and Estelle de Araujo, who are Co-Heads of Sales at the Paris-based The Party Film Sales.

“It is more necessary than ever, and we strongly believe it will inspire, mobilize and empower audiences around the world.”

The documentary is produced by Ciara Barry at Glasgow-based production house barry crerar, in association with Bustos Sierra’s Debasers Filums. Emma Thompson is an executive producer alongside Mark Thomas, Kevin McGrath and Susan Simnett.

The documentary will world premiere at Sundance in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, and make its UK premiere as the opening film of the Glasgow Film Festival at the end of February.

Al Jazeera Media Network is a co-producer, while Conic Films has UK and Ireland distribution rights.