‘Rebellion’ Interview on Film Doc on Bradford 12, Migrants, Elon Musk

A city north of Bradford, England, near Leeds. During the Industrial Revolution, it was known as a place of wool manufacturing. Nowadays, among other things, it is also famous for its South Asian food scene.

And in the early 1980s, it made national and global headlines when 12 young South Asians stood trial on terrorism charges for preparing to defend their community from a racist attack. Activist filmmaker Ken Farrow (extreme violence) and Tariq Mahmood’s documentary RebellionFrom Migrant Media, a group of radical documentary filmmakers focusing on stories about race, class, and resistance, reflects on their story and broader impact. Mahmood is, in fact, one of the Bradford 12.

Rebellion World-premiere as part of the 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF) on 14 October. The festival website notes, “Revolution is the rhythm that rings through this electrifying story about the landmark case against the Bradford 12.”

spoke to ferro heart about what time Rebellion Today, amid the renewed rise of far-right politics, one realizes why this was a journey over 30 years, the importance of involving the community in film making and why cinema can be a weapon.

Rebellion Seems very timely. How long did you work on it, and did you know beforehand that it would be a historical film that also reflects our presence?

I met Tariq Mehmood in 1991, when he was making another film Britain’s dark heritageWhich was looking at the history of self-defense against racist attacks in Britain from ’61 to ’91. Tariq told me about the Bradford 12, and I thought, well, I’ve never heard of the Bradford 12. I’ve heard of the Mangrove Nine; I’ve heard of the Birmingham Six; And I’ve heard about all these miscarriages of justice. But the Bradford 12 weren’t really very famous.

So he said that we should make a film on this. Fast forward 33 years later – meanwhile we got busy making movies: We decided it was time to tell [this story]. It took almost 30 years because we wanted the story to move forward and see what happens. As time passed, we began to see and realize that the political situation in Britain was changing. [Just look at the] For example, the growth of the far right and vilifying immigrants, trying to scapegoat them for political problems.

S, we decided, let’s make the film. The time is right. It took three or four years in the making, and obviously the fact that it’s coming out now when far-right, or proto-fascist groups are starting to take to the streets, [makes it timely].

Groups of people wearing black clothes and masks are roaming on the streets of Britain, trying to target migrants. When fascists and racists take to the streets, they do not differentiate between who has a UK passport and is a citizen and who is not. It could be anyone who stands out. People have to understand – this is a serious question of race, but really it’s also a question of all our freedoms; It is a question of all our lives, and it is a question of all our hopes and dreams that these people want to crush.

This film gives the feeling of history repeating itself…

There’s a line in the film that goes something like this: The grandchildren of people who marched with the far right in the 80s are now burning down hostels with asylum seekers. The lack of political activity in working-class communities is a fundamental problem here. There’s no effort to go into white working-class communities and say, “Your problems were created by Elon Musk, not immigrants,” and I think that’s one of the things the film tries to do politically.

Tell me more about how you see the role of Elon Musk, who has expressed support for various right-wing European politicians…

This is a complicated area to discuss, but basically, if you take [Reform UK head and right-wing British politician Nigel Farage]For example, and if you take any of the far-right groups that are becoming popular in Italy, Germany, France, and if you look at what’s happening in the streets in France and police attacking children, there is a huge change happening politically internationally. Let’s not even talk about Trump.

There’s a big shift to the right, and historically shifts to the right always happen when it feels like people are organizing. There has been a lot of resistance growing in the last few years, especially among young people. You can talk about many countries where there have been revolutions against very established governments, and we have seen many countries in the Global South fall, and that is a threat to capitalism, and that is a threat to imperialism.

I think they want to create friction within their own countries, so it distracts people from what’s really going on. So people are trying to pit people against each other, create “the other,” whether the other is in a European country or whether it’s Iran, and we must have international solidarity. We must have communities working together. We have to fight capitalism and defeat it.

Rebellion It’s just a movie. This is a documentary. There will be no revolution from this. This may lead to some small rebellions, which will become larger in some places.

The film has an atmosphere of activism but also hope. How important is this to you?

Of course, the other side of it too [story] Was it an incredible victory. This is a story of hope. This is a story of unity, and it shows that in any situation, whether it’s 1980, 2026 or anything in the future, if people really organize and support each other, it is possible to defeat the forces of evil, no matter how you want to define them.

Tell me more about how important the idea of ​​resistance is to your filmmaking and diasporic media films.

If you watch any documentary we’ve made, it’s always been about resistance. It’s always about hope. The conditions are fatal, serious and painful. But in any painful situation, when there is oppression, there are always people who are fighting, and that’s what we want to do. We want to give people hope. We want to give hope to the young generation. They’re in the streets, whether it’s about environmentalism, whether it’s about Gaza, whether it’s about Black Lives Matter, and there are connections between all of these struggles.

So, you see Rebellion And the Bradford 12 as a possible inspiration for them?

12 for youth [South] For Asians in 1981 to take on the British establishment, to take on not just the police, not just the government, but the security services, and have them all found not guilty by a jury is an incredible achievement.

And if you, for example, compare today again around the question [the activist group] Palestine action [that has been designated as a terrorist organization in the U.K. since 2025]Where people are taking stand and they are also being accused of being terrorists. The difference now, of course, is that terrorism has been enshrined in the legal system in such a way that it has been politicized to a degree that it has never been before. So now we have a 95-year-old ex-preacher who is protesting around Palestine and being thrown in jail.

We are not going to sound the alarm. We don’t want things to be sad. We do not want this kind of political violence to happen. But if we ignore it, it is a danger to all of us. Therefore we have to raise these issues. But people have to be given hope.

I noticed that the resistance movement that we see in the film is comprised of activists from a variety of backgrounds: South Asian people, whether they’re Muslim, Catholic or otherwise, groups of black people, Jewish activists, etc. Watching today’s division around Gaza, I was mesmerized by this.

Yes, Tarik mentions in the film how much support the Bradford 12 got from progressive Jewish organizations and how they actually learned a lot from progressive Jewish organizations. Many Jewish people supported the Bradford 12 and vice versa.

There has been much debate about how political cinema can and should be…

I think it was Wim Wenders who once said something like, “The news tells you every day that there is no hope.” You see it every day, and eventually you believe it. And of course, many filmmakers have taken that position, not just documentary filmmakers, but fiction filmmakers as well. But for us it is definitely a political topic.

This film was also made politically and that’s really important to us. Many of the people in the Bradford 12 were editorial advisors, and they participated. We organized a kind of Third Cinema program. [Third Cinema, which originated in Latin America in the 1960s, focuses on social justice and resistance against imperialism and uses guerrilla filmmaking techniques.] So the test scene of the film, which takes up about a third of the film, was actually shot in a single day with the community. wasn’t there [professional] Actors included.

We put out a callout and about 120 people came, including people from the Bradford 12, their grandchildren, their children, people from the community. We had some filmmakers, we had bakers, we had street sweepers, we had everybody coming because they were really interested in the story, and then they became part of the history and became part of the history of the film. That was our first venture into reconstruction, but it was done using the Third Cinema approach, where you involve people and tell the story as you go.

What are your expectations from the film?

Our hope is that anyone who watches the film can come away and realize that wherever there is injustice, they must fight it in their own lives, that it is possible to have hope. Some lessons from the Bradford 12 are that you can’t do it on your own. You have to organize – whether it’s an issue in your local community, whether it’s an international issue, whether it’s a national issue. And it’s not just organizing through social media, but it’s [important] Meeting, eating together, dreaming together, fighting together.