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00:06I'm Matt Carey, Senior Documentary Editor at Deadline, and welcome to our seventh year
00:12of For the Love of Docs, a virtual series spotlighting documentary stories and filmmakers.
00:19The series, and every film featured in it, is made possible by our partner Nat Geo,
00:25removing barriers, elevating voices. Powered by Deadline and Nat Geo.
00:32We are an exploratory species. We have adventure built into our genes.
00:37If we see where we are, we also discover something about who we are.
00:46We are joined now by the filmmaker Felipe Bustos Sierra. Thank you so much for being with us
00:52on For the Love of Docs. My pleasure. Nice to see you again, Matt.
00:56Yes, great to see you. You're coming to us from Edinburgh, not too far away from Glasgow.
01:03And you lived in Glasgow when this incident happened.
01:07That's right. At the time of the protest, I live in Govanhill, which is the sister neighborhood
01:12of Pollock Shields, both in the south side of Glasgow. Also a neighborhood with its own
01:16long history of civil resistance. It's fascinating to hear about the history of Glasgow that you get
01:24into, including in that neighborhood of Govanhill that you just mentioned. And that the residents
01:33of the city both seem to be, have no hesitation really to engage in civil action if they feel
01:41it's warranted. And also an acknowledgement of how the city was built or some of its wealth
01:50coming from the extraction of, from plantation economies in other parts of the world. So
01:57that the residents of the city seem very aware of that.
02:01Yeah, yeah, yeah, they are. Absolutely. I mean, it was something to, that came up many times
02:08in the conversation. You know, Glasgow has always been seen as a bit of a rebel city,
02:12you know, even in the, even in the national, the British national anthem, the Scots are being
02:18referred to as rebellious and as rebels that need to be squelched, I think. And that history
02:27obviously permeates that neighborhood, right? It is, the south side of Glasgow has been a landing
02:35space for immigrants for, for centuries since it was created really. And, you know, working
02:41class and immigrants living together. It started with the, you know, Gales speaking Scots coming
02:46from the islands, cleared off their lands. It's always been about lands, you know, and bad
02:51landlords really that history. And, you know, then, then Jewish folk fleeing, fleeing the rise
02:59of fascism and pogroms in Europe. And Irish folk around the same time, Italian and Polish people
03:06fleeing the rise of fascism. And, you know, and lately since the 50s, 60s, it's been Southeast Asian
03:13people. But it has left on that part of the city, a sense of, this is a welcoming place. And
03:21it's a
03:21sense of, we are dealing with something that is, the shared humanity is so obvious, we are dealing with
03:26poverty on a day-to-day basis. How do we fight it? But also how do we make the community,
03:31you know,
03:33sustainable in between these being Catholics? So it was really interesting, you know, especially
03:39because as I lived in Governing Hill, but, and I received the same message as everybody else that
03:42morning, but I didn't go. I didn't feel the hope. I was coming off my previous film where I talked
03:49to
03:49many civil servants for the British government who talked very much about protest as something that was
03:54so easy to ignore. You know, one of them saying, a bit of too much noise outside, there's a million
04:00people outside protesting the war in Iraq. All they had to do was shut down the window and get back
04:07to work. And so I was really taken on what is feeling, okay, mass protest doesn't work anymore.
04:14And when I saw the message, I thought, this is another, this is an occasion for success or discovery.
04:20This is another baton to the face. I don't want to feel that today. I didn't go.
04:26And so, but obviously, without spoiling what happened on the day, I missed out on something
04:31I've always wanted to experience. All these strangers coming together and achieving something
04:38just by being in that shared space, figuring out constant ways to disarm, you know, the police and
04:46government that were putting pressure around that van. And so, you know, this idea, obviously,
04:54on the next day, I was on the street, and I was talking to people, I was talking to friends,
04:57and trying to get a sense of what happened. And so figure out a timeline, not really thinking about
05:02it as a film, but like, what, as a human being, I'm the son of a Chilean refugee from the
05:08Pinochet
05:08dictatorship. I'm very aware of solidarity. I'm very aware of how much of it is needed. And yet,
05:14I missed out. And, and I didn't express my own solidarity. And by the end of the week,
05:22all these different moving parts about a new intelligence about solidarity about how to organize
05:28and, and what people are witnessing what people have done, made me think there's something there's
05:32something new here. And maybe making this film would make me feel like I was part of it, too.
05:39I think you more than made up for your absence on on the day, through this film. And, you know,
05:48there, there's, I think, an enormous challenge to making this film in the sense that there were so
05:54many cell phone cameras, of course, that people were using. And how are you able to sequence them so
06:03that you know that footage you're using is in the proper order, and you're not somehow getting images
06:11that were shot at one time, and mixing them in with something that happened a half hour earlier,
06:15or an hour earlier? I mean, that strikes me as, as a significant logistical challenge.
06:22I mean, I mean, it was, I think it was the hardest part of making this film, I mean, the
06:26entire protest
06:27is shown, is told through what people had at hand on the day. We were lucky that two people who
06:36lived
06:36on the street were professional cameramen. And they started filming on the smartphones, but went back,
06:42you know, they had a sense of there's something new happening. I went back, got their, you know,
06:464k cameras, and managed to capture the second half of the day. But most of it is, is, you know,
06:53is smartphone cameras, and some really bad, some really old ones too. But, you know, so it was the
07:01biggest challenge. I'm really lucky that I've become good friends with Colin Mooney, who's been my
07:06editor, both on the Passaran and this. He's one of the best filmmakers in Scotland, in the UK, in the
07:11world,
07:12really, you know, working across fiction and documentary. But, and, you know, I think for
07:18all of us, this has been a labor of love. So sort of the mountain ahead of us, we knew
07:23there was a
07:23sense of once we'd scan through all that footage, completely out of sync. Some of it obviously coming
07:29from activists, so you can, you know, all the metadata had been been scrubbed, which made it really
07:34difficult to create an accurate timeline, which we eventually got to. But that was, that was,
07:41that was months of work. But again, it was the sense of doing the right thing to the footage.
07:48And, and as the person was going to tell the story, who had been present, it had to be told
07:52from a multitudinal perspective, it had to be told using their footage. And I guess in a way we
08:00realized really quickly that there was something actually quite immersive and sensory, that at
08:07times made me feel watching this, I feel like I was there. And, and that as a sort of personal
08:13barometer made me feel this is, this feels right, and this is the right way to go.
08:18Hmm. And I want to ask you in a moment about the participation of Emma Thompson.
08:23And, but first in watching the, the film again, I was very struck by how you framed the interviews
08:33with people who were there on the street, which I didn't, it didn't quite register with me the first
08:40time I saw it. But when I watched it this time, I realized most directors I think would have gotten
08:46in very tight on the face of people and, and their face, or maybe from the shoulders up would have
08:53occupied the whole screen. You place them on a background and the people are actually kind of
09:01small in a way. They're not occupying the full frame. And that struck me as, as really interesting
09:09that I think it showed, despite being small, if you will, their solidarity made them big
09:19and they pulled off what they did.
09:23You know, I hadn't really thought of it that way.
09:27But that's really interesting. I mean, one of the challenge of getting so many people on camera,
09:33and you know, as most documentary filmmakers will know, the challenge of not having money
09:38to be able to shoot everything at once, with Kirsten McMahon, the cinematographer,
09:45we had to figure out a way, a template that would be applied to everyone in whatever
09:50circumstances we'd find them in. And we, you know, because there's a lot of creative
09:59shows that came up really early, because there was no actual practical filmmaking that could be done,
10:03because this was happening during COVID. I couldn't go with a camera into people's homes.
10:08And so the first four months of this project was just myself walking around Queens Park,
10:13the main local park in the south side of Glasgow, with a different person from the protest each day,
10:20to get a sense of, you know, what they'd done, how they'd experienced it, why I brought them to the
10:25streets. And a huge part of it, at times, was to actually convince them that their testimony was
10:32valid and belonged in the film. I think most people would just go, oh, you don't want to talk to
10:38me?
10:38Yeah, of course I was there. And I said, well, I wasn't there. You were there. So, you know,
10:43you'll have things to tell me that I don't know about. And that may need to be part of the
10:48film,
10:49to be a part of this kind of tapestry. And this lack of, at times, confidence of my voice,
10:55is not as important or doesn't belong in something that might be seen as a retelling of history,
11:04is something that I've often clashed with, you know, from my own background. I think we're not
11:10told that our voice matters at times. And so we, when I was relaying this with Kirsten talking about
11:16things, I think she had this idea of how do we frame people and let people, the audience watching that
11:23you are watching the experts of their own lives, right? And also, you know, we were dealing with
11:30things of, I think often, you know, revolutionaries are considering blowing stuff up,
11:37big gestures, grand speeches. And the way people organize on Kenney streets made me feel these are
11:43all small revolutionaries, or revolutionaries with a small r, at least. But this feeling that they had,
11:50that this was wrong. And it may have been, there may be told by the police or by the home
11:55office that
11:55this is illegal. But like, no, this is wrong. You don't remove people from their home in the middle
11:59of the morning. You don't remove them without valid cause, as this was happening. You know,
12:04there's absolutely nothing illegal that's been done by these two guys. These are our neighbors,
12:09and we're just going to stand for our community. And, you know, organizing to find food, to find
12:16water, to find somebody else who might have a bit more information, a bit, a bit more legal
12:21knowledge about what they can do. It's all these kind of small revolutionary acts to me. And that,
12:28that brought the result that, you know, that stands at the end, at the end of the protest,
12:31and, you know, the film. And so part of the framing came from this.
12:35Right.
12:35Like Evan Engel, we look like lots of portraits from the, from, you know, the international brigades,
12:42from the Spanish Civil War. And they had this sense of, there's a certain pride that they didn't,
12:48and they just stand confident in what they're saying. And I think it was a little awkward for
12:54some of them to sit in that way, but eventually they just seemed to get it. And, and a certain
13:00confidence and charisma came out of that. But it was a bit of a gamble, to be fair.
13:05Well, it's so interesting to hear that. And Emma Thompson, of course, not only an executive
13:12producer on the film, but of course, we see her and two other actors. And it's such a remarkable
13:19element of the film. And I think probably for most people, it's, it's quite startling to initially
13:26see Emma Thompson just wedged into the frame enacting Van Man. How did you shoot those? I think that
13:38you did those in London, is that right?
13:40That's right. So for all three of them, so for Emma Thompson, Kate Dickey, who plays the nurse,
13:46and Kira Lucchesi, who plays the young woman who was arrested, we were shot in different location
13:51for, with Kate and Kira, were able to shoot actually on Cadmure Street. But for Emma, we're obviously
14:02completely at her sort of disposal. She was doing us an absolute favor. Again, that decision came out of
14:09that process of not being able to film anything. And meeting Van Man, obviously a very important
14:16character on the day. And, you know, like the nurse, like the young woman who was arrested,
14:24had this sense of, I think, I think this is something I want to be a part of, but I
14:30don't
14:31want to have my face as part of it. I want to remain anonymous, all for different reasons. Some were
14:36very traumatic. Others were just, you know, for the nurse, the privilege to be able to do this again
14:39in an anonymous way. And for Van Man, he felt he'd been on the receiving end of so much,
14:47I suppose, congratulations and flattery that he felt this kind of jars of what I actually did.
14:53And so they all gave me their words. And I thought maybe even though I was really,
15:00I was really keen to make a sort of almost kind of pure documentary and just use that footage and
15:04testimonies of people who were on the day, I realized I don't want to make that film without
15:09those testimonies. They brought an intimacy that we didn't really have. You know, all that
15:19smartphone footage conveyed so much urgency, placed you in the moment, but rarely, for you, the glimpse
15:25of these are two people talking to each other and making a sort of kind of personal pact with each
15:30other, right? That is about safety. That is about, again, solidarity in a different way.
15:37And hearing the conversation and putting those testimonies together and the conversation that
15:41the nurse and the Van Man had, it reminded me of that intimacy of solidarity. It reminded me of being
15:47a kid at a Chile solidarity event and of complete strangers, you know, who clearly had no connection with
15:56people, actually, who had been saved their entire life. But they understood what, you know, my father
16:02and his compatriots had gone through and offered it with that question. And I wonder how do I convey
16:11this, right? Like there's so much humor in Van Man's action and so much mischief and a certain defiance.
16:17And it was very much the ace in the sleeve for many of the protesters there. You know, everybody talks
16:24about Marvel and, and, you know, we have a Hulk on camera. They're like, well, we have a Van Man.
16:29And you guys don't know what to do about that. And so, you know, this gives you a bit of
16:34a, you know,
16:35it keeps our head up above all the kind of chaos. And, you know, luckily I had kept a light
16:43correspondence
16:44with Emma Thompson after my first film came out about Chile, a country that she has also a strong
16:48connection with. And so when Van Man told me he didn't want to be an actor and, you know,
16:56these walks in the park, I guess, you know, when you don't have much resources, you think,
17:02oh, what do I have? And it's often like a creative solution. And I just pictured Emma Thompson going
17:06out there and saying, hey, I'm Van Man. Made me laugh. Like, maybe, maybe this is what Van Man did
17:11to the protest and Emma will do for our film. I sort of, an element that anything goes maybe.
17:20So obviously we were ready to do whatever was needed to, to make it comfortable. So we did build
17:26the rig. We didn't put it underneath a van. She did arrive, looked at the rig, looked at me and
17:32Kirsten
17:32and said, this is the strangest thing anyone's ever asked me to do.
17:39Yeah, I didn't think. Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? But I think it worked, you
17:46know,
17:47and by the end, it was a very short shoot. But by the end, she felt, oh yeah, this is,
17:50I think she
17:51made a discomfort part of her performance. And so it worked really well, yeah.
17:56Yeah, and it is a performance. And the woman you mentioned who plays the nurse, I thought,
18:02these are really great performances. They're committed and you feel the presence of the
18:11people that they were embodying. So I think it's a really remarkable achievement. I think for Americans,
18:19inevitably, we're going to think about ice raids that have happened since Donald Trump returned to
18:25office as president, which has resulted in the deaths of innocent bystanders in some cases. And so
18:34there are considerable differences, one being that the police in Glasgow were not armed. And
18:43it strikes me that if this had happened in Minneapolis, let's say, or somewhere else,
18:51and it was an ice van that was trying to take people away, they would have simply fired up the
18:56van and run
18:57over van man, and then called him a terrorist afterwards. So I think it is important for people to reflect
19:05on
19:05on differences of approach. And it adds a certain layer, if you will, to how we view the film,
19:16the sense that there's a cultural dynamic there. You can sense that the police are questioning
19:21themselves like, oh, gee, what do we do now?
19:24I believe so, yeah.
19:26You know, we see them link arms at one point, and they sort of form a V, and they're going
19:31to charge
19:32their way to the van. And it doesn't work. They get caught up in the bodies. Yeah, I guess that
19:40my
19:41question would be, when you've taken it to the United States, and you showed it in Minneapolis,
19:46of course, where one of those innocent people was killed by ice, what is the reaction, Ben? What
19:53feelings has the film evoked that you have detected?
19:58I mean, at first, disbelief. Disbelief. And especially before seeing the film, I think
20:03people know that it's something that's about, that is incredibly relatable and incredibly close to home.
20:09And I've had people ask me before this sort of film if this was a sort of an experiment
20:14of community organizing. So trying to illustrate through documentary, but, you know, that this was
20:22something that could happen, which is kind of shocking to think that people might think that
20:29this is not, that this could not happen. And I mean, disbelief in elation by the end of it. But
20:38of course, with a certain nagging feeling that this is not available to you guys yet, right?
20:48And so even though they may not be able to take complete comfort in the victory that Glasgow managed
20:55to have, I think they will recognize absolutely that the gestures, the attitudes, and sort of the
21:03community organizing is something that is absolutely shared. And again, that shared humanity, this idea of
21:10it doesn't matter where you come from, you've come here to make a home for yourself, you're part of the
21:13community. Everybody else is trying to stand against you. It's actually disrupting the community.
21:21And I mean, it's interesting. There are so many conversations in the U.S.
21:25post-screenings, they've ended up bringing gun control and how mild police Scotland is in its action,
21:33which is, to be fair, kind of mad to us living here. But of course, the fact that they're not
21:38allowed to
21:39carry guns forces them to take into account the consciousness of the people in front of them.
21:47And it has a few more filters in the decision making, which is that they can't just barge in.
21:51I mean, they try to, they try to on the day. But it meant that people were able to organize,
22:00and obviously, you know, the hundreds, potentially thousands of cameras around the day, obviously,
22:05were obviously in their favor, putting this directly back on social media at the time,
22:10were completely in their favor. The police knew that they were being observed, which is a very,
22:15which must be a very strange situation for themselves.
22:19Yeah, I think it's, again, the film can be experienced in many ways, which I think is,
22:25any great documentary, that's the case. But it's a fascinating study in group psychology,
22:33social psychology, among other things, as you see this dynamic unfold. And the people of Kenmare
22:42Street who came out, and from surrounding neighborhoods, and they found out what was
22:46happening, just sort of realizing, well, maybe this will work. And I know that it's,
22:53it's fascinating on that level. It's really such a remarkable film. It is everybody to Kenmure Street.
23:00We have been joined by the director Felipe Bustosierra. Thank you so much for being with us on For the
23:07Love of Docs.
23:08Yeah, pleasure. And thank you so much for belting out my name with your accent. I really appreciated it.
23:13Thank you again for making this amazing film.