"Riot": Why the Bradford 12 Documentary Is So Timely, and Why Its Makers Want People to Know "Your Problems Were Created by Elon Musk, Not Migrants"

Ken Fero discusses the London-screened story of young South Asian men who were tried on terrorism charges for preparing to defend their community against a racist attack, co-directed by one of them.

Bradford, near Leeds, is a city in the north of England. During the industrial revolution, this place became known as a place of wool production. Today, it is known, among other things, for its South Asian food scene.

And in the early 1980s, it made national and global headlines when 12 young South Asian men were tried on terrorism charges for preparing to defend their community against a racist attack. Ken Farrow (Utraviolence) Activist and documentary filmmaker Tariq Mahmoud of Migrant Media, a series of radical documentarians focusing on stories about race, class and resistance, tells their story and wider impact. Mahmoud is actually one of the Bradford 12.

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Rebellion will be screened as part of the 70th edition of the London Film Festival (LFF) on October 14. The festival's website notes: "Revolution is the beating heart of this thrilling story about the historic case of the Bradford 12."

Firo spoke with THR about how timely Riot feels today amid the resurgence of far-right politics, why it's been a journey spanning more than 30 years, the importance of community involvement in filmmaking, and why cinema can be a weapon.

The rebellion is very timely. How long did you work on it and did you know early on that it was going to be a historical film that also reflects our presence?

In 1991 I met with Tariq Mahmood and made another film called Britain's Black Heritage, which looked at the history of self-defense against racist attacks in Britain from 1961 to 1991. Tariq told me about Bradford 12, and I thought, well, I've never heard of Bradford 12. I have heard of the Birmingham Six. And I have heard of all these malpractices. But the Bradford 12 weren't really that well known.

So he said we should make a movie about it. Fast forward 33 years later - meanwhile we were making the film: we decided now was the time to tell [this story]. It took about 30 years because we wanted this story to happen and see what happens. Over time, we realized and felt that the political situation in Britain was changing. [Just look at] the growth of the far right, for example, and the denigration of immigrants, trying to create a scapegoat for political problems.

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

Groups of masked people in black roam the streets of Britain trying to target immigrants. When fascists and racists take to the streets, they don't differentiate between someone who has a British passport and is a citizen or not. It can be anyone who looks different. Here's what people need to know—this is a serious question about race, but it's also really a question about all of our freedoms. It is the question of all our lives, and the question of all our hopes and dreams that these people want to shatter.

This movie gives people the feeling of repeating history...

There's a line in the movie that goes something like this: The grandchildren of people who marched with the far right in the 80s are now setting fire to refugee camps. There is a fundamental problem of lack of political activity in working class communities. There's no attempt to go into white working-class communities and say, "Your problems are caused by Elon Musk, not immigrants," and I think that's one of the things the film is trying to do politically.

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

It's a complex area to debate, but basically, if you take [Nigel Farage, the British reform leader and right-wing politician] for example, and if you take any of the far-right groups that are gaining popularity in Italy, Germany, France, and if you look at what's happening in the streets in France and the police are attacking children, there's a big political change happening internationally. Let's not even talk about Trump.

There's a big shift to the right, and a shift to the right historically always happens when there's a sense that people are organizing. In the past few years, there has been a growing resistance, especially among young people. You can talk about a lot of countries where there have been revolutions against very established governments, and we've seen a lot of countries fall in the global south, and that's a threat to capitalism, and that's a threat to imperialism.

I think they want to create friction within their own country, so it distracts people from what's really going on. Therefore, people try to pit people against each other and create an "other", whether the other is in any European country or Iran, and we must have international solidarity. We must have communities that work together. We must take on capitalism and defeat it.

Riot is just a movie. This is a documentary, it will not cause a revolution, it may cause small riots, which will be great in some places.

There is an exuberance of activism as well as hope in the film. How important is it to you?

Of course, the other side of this [story] is that it was an incredible victory. It's a story of hope, it's a story of unity, and it shows that in any situation, whether it's the 1980s, 2026, or whatever happens in the future, if people really organize and support each other, you can defeat the forces of evil, whatever you want to define them.

Tell me about how key the idea of resistance is to your filmmaking and immigrant media films.

If you see a documentary we've made, it's always been about resistance. It's always about hope. The situations are fatal, serious and painful. But in any painful situation, when there is any oppression, there are always people who fight, 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 the environment, whether it's about Gaza, whether it's about Black Lives Matter, and there's a connection between all of these struggles.

So, you see Rebellion and Bradford 12 as possible inspirations?

For 12 young [South] Asians in 1981 to stand up to the British establishment, not just the police, not just the government, but the security services, and for a jury to find them all not guilty is an incredible feat.

And if you compare it again to today, for example, the question around [activist group] Palestine Action [designated as a terrorist organization in the UK from 2025] where people are taking a stand and also being accused of being terrorists. The difference now, of course, is that terrorism has been incorporated into the legal system in a way where it has been politicized to a degree that has never been done before. So now we have 95 year old preachers protesting all over Palestine and going to jail.

We are not alarmists, we don't want everything to be sad, we don't want this kind of political violence. But if we ignore it, we are all at risk. So we have to raise these issues. But people should be given hope.

I noticed how the resistance movements we see in the film have activists from different backgrounds: South Asians, whether Muslim, Catholic or otherwise, black groups, Jewish activists, etc. Given the divisions around Gaza today, I was intrigued by this.

Yes, Tariq mentions in the film how supportive Bradford 12 is of progressive Jewish organizations and how they have really learned a lot from progressive Jewish organizations. Many Jews supported the Bradford 12 and vice versa.

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

I think it was Wim Wenders who once said something like, "Every day the news tells you there is no hope." You watch it every day and eventually you believe it. And of course, many filmmakers have taken this position, not just documentary filmmakers, but fiction filmmakers as well. But for us, it's definitely a political issue.

The film is also made politically, and for us, that's really important. Many of the people who were in Bradford 12 were editorial advisors and participated. We organized a kind of third cinema event. [Third cinema, developed in Latin America in the 1960s, focuses on social justice and resistance to imperialism and uses guerrilla filmmaking techniques.] So the test scene in the film, which takes up about a third of the film, was actually all shot in one day with the community. No [professional] actors were involved.

We put out a call and about 120 people came, including people from Bradford 12, their grandchildren, their children and people from the community. We had some filmmakers, we had bakers, we had street cleaners, everyone came because they were really interested in the story, and then they became part of the history and part of the film history. It was our first venture into a remake, but it was done using a third-cinema approach, where you engage people and tell the story as you go along.

Our hope is that anyone who sees the film can go away feeling that wherever there is injustice, they have to fight it in their own lives, which is to be hoped for. Some of the lessons of Bradford 12 are that you can't do it alone. You need to organize - whether it's around an issue in your local community, an international issue, or a national issue. And it's not just organizing through social media, it's [important] to meet together, eat together, dream together, fight together.

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