Misan Harriman: “The humanity I bear witness to is…

There’s anoth­er great Peter Magubane quote in the film, in which he says that ​“a strug­gle with­out doc­u­men­ta­tion is no strug­gle at all”. In times when protest­ing has become more dan­ger­ous, and sur­veil­lance technology’s use is increas­ing, how do you mar­ry that need to doc­u­ment, with the risk that exact doc­u­men­ta­tion could put peo­ple at risk of los­ing their jobs, or being used against them in court?

Because there is a cost to lib­er­a­tion. It’s as sim­ple as that. I think of my friends in Youth Demand or Pales­tine Action. Some of them are in prison now for throw­ing soup at a Van Gogh paint­ing. 23 years old. They are telling us that our futures are under threat from the cli­mate cri­sis, and they’re will­ing to bear the scars. I’ve nev­er heard of any kind of resis­tance for change with­out a cost.

So many peo­ple now, because they know that I’m not work­ing for a major news organ­i­sa­tion, they’re like: ​“Thank god.” Because they know that I’m going to do right by what I see, and that they aren’t going to see my images next to a Suel­la Braver­man state­ment call­ing them ​“hate march­es”. So, whether I like it or not, I’ve become quite inte­gral to mak­ing sure that truth isn’t a nee­dle in a haystack.

Of course, a big protest move­ment had bro­ken out in Los Ange­les right now, which has spread across the USA. Do you think this could be a moment where we might see change?

It’s the chaos the­o­ry of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, right? The idea that Mex­i­can peo­ple are being called ille­gal aliens – look at the his­to­ry of Mex­i­co and Amer­i­ca. The Latine com­mu­ni­ty is being harassed this way is an affront to the very foun­da­tion of that very young coun­try. I think Cal­i­for­nia has been picked up because of the size of its econ­o­my and because it’s gen­er­al­ly a lib­er­al state. What scares me the most is that there are way too many guns in that coun­try for my lik­ing, and it doesn’t take much for it to prop­er­ly kick off.

One of the first scenes that every­one saw was the news reporter being shot by a rub­ber bullet.

We are in unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry. This is a time for film­mak­ers, pho­tog­ra­phers and artists to recog­nise that we are need­ed, and in the pre­mière of Shoot the Peo­ple, there were so many peo­ple who were emo­tion­al, because the film felt like a com­pan­ion to the jour­ney that they are already on, and remind­ing them through his­to­ry, inter­views and my own per­son­al jour­ney that we can all grow and learn how to build com­mu­ni­ty better.

I can relate to that. Protest move­ments aren’t some­thing that usu­al­ly makes it to the big screen.

Not at this scale, and I won­der what the industry’s going to make of it. One of my men­tors said to me: ​“You know how rare it is to be e a liv­ing artist and have some­thing like this made? Usu­al­ly, you have to be dead.” If you think of the big ones, there was I’m Not Your Negro, which was about James Bald­win, and he was long gone. The Ernest Cone doc came out ear­li­er this year, and he’s also gone. But I’m here doing what­ev­er I can, and this film is there to say: ​“Walk with me, please. Let’s do bet­ter than what we are witnessing.”

Shoot the Peo­ple pre­miered at SXSW Lon­don 2025. Fol­low Mis­an on Insta­gram.

Isaac Muk is Huck’s dig­i­tal edi­tor. Fol­low him on Bluesky.

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