Bermuda Riots Are Different (2026)
There is a version of Bermuda that exists almost entirely on postcards, all pink beaches and pastel calm, and part of what makes Bermuda Riots Are Different worthwhile is how firmly it shoves that image aside. Co-directed by Alyson Thompson and Matt Mead, this six-minute documentary short digs into a turbulent stretch of the island's history that rarely makes it into the tourist brochures, and while it is good rather than great, it taught me things I did not know and sent me off wanting to know more. Three stars.
The film sets out to examine a decade of race riots between 1968 and 1977, and it frames that unrest within a triangle of colonial influence: Bermuda itself, Great Britain and the United States. It is a smart way in, because the story it tells is precisely about a people caught between competing powers, Bermudians fighting for their own freedoms against Western interests that saw the island as little more than a paradise to be enjoyed. The archival footage is the heart of it, and it is genuinely compelling: the riots themselves, the reasons behind them, the testimony drawn from the official inquiries into what happened. For a film this short, it covers a surprising amount of ground, and it never feels like it is coasting on its imagery.
What I appreciated most is simply that it exists and points a light somewhere underexplored. I suspect a lot of viewers, myself included, will come to this knowing next to nothing about Bermuda's postwar struggles, and the film does a clean, efficient job of laying out the shape of that history and the colonial pressures that shaped it. It is clearly made with care and conviction, and you can feel the argument it is building even in so brief a running time.
Where it falls a little short for me is in voice. The piece leans heavily on archive and inquiry, which gives it authority but keeps it at arm's length, and I found myself wishing for something more intimate to anchor it. A few firsthand interviews, the people who lived through those years speaking for themselves, or even the perspective of Thompson, a Bermudian telling her own island's story, would have given the film a pulse to go with its research. As it stands it informs more than it moves, and the difference between good and great here is really the difference between a strong primer and something that truly gets under your skin.
Three stars. Bermuda Riots Are Different is a concise, intelligent and genuinely illuminating piece of historical documentary that does real justice to a story worth telling. It left me wanting more, which is both its chief limitation and, in its way, a quiet compliment. With the directors reportedly developing a full-length film on the same period, I will be first in the queue, because the subject plainly deserves the longer look.
Bermuda Riots Are Different screens at the BFI London Film Festival as part of the I See Myself shorts programme.
Related on Movies With Macca
More from Country Bermuda: By Any Means (2017)
More from the 2020s: All That's Left of You (2025), The Whale (2022), Look Back (2024)
More documentary: Mon Taxi (2026), Kikuyu Land (2026), Bel (2026)
