The English city of Bristol has become one of the hotspots of the current #BlackLivesMatter protests in Europe, as activists* sank the statue of a slave trader into the river. The city is also the location of this documentary film, which deals with the colonial past and black history of Great Britain. The Mayor's Race accompanies the incumbent Mayor of Bristol during the 2012 and 2016 elections, in which Marvin Rees, son of a Jamaican father and an English mother, talks about his experiences of poverty and racism and his desire to help shape the society in which he lives. Confronted with rejection and his own doubts, but also experiencing support from the community and the Labour Party, his path into politics becomes the biggest challenge of his life.
Director Loraine Blumenthal uses Marvin Rees' biography to illuminate the connection between race and class, anti-racist resistance in British society, the so-called Windrush Generation and a small piece of the history of BAME in the Labour Party.
The elections for the mayor's* office in Bristol should have taken place in May, but were postponed for one year because of Covid-19.

The Mayors Race |Director Loraine Blumenthal | 2018, Großbritannien | 80 min.
Talk 9 pm with Loraine Blumenthal (director) and Eleonora Roldán Mendívil (journalist, political scientist and political educator)