{"id":88684,"date":"2025-07-24T13:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T13:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/88684\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T13:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T13:05:11","slug":"leaving-neverland-director-dan-reed-on-film-one-day-in-southport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/88684\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Leaving Neverland’ Director Dan Reed On Film ‘One Day In Southport’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE<\/strong>: Long before Dan Reed<\/a> was making BAFTA-winning documentaries about paedophiles, terror attacks, and problematic pop princes, he directed episodes of crime dramas Poirot and Inspector Lewis. It was on the latter, he got to know Laurence Fox, a dashing British actor, embraced by the establishment alongside his ex-wife, the Doctor Who star Billie Piper.<\/p>\n

\n\tFlash forward nearly two decades, and Reed had cause to contact Fox for very different reasons. Fox has become a pariah in the entertainment industry because of his anti-immigration rhetoric, race-baiting, and misogyny. He is now a protagonist in the British manosphere, with views deemed so unpallatable, he was ejected from GB News, the UK network that embraces storytelling about populist ideals.<\/p>\n

\n\tReed wanted to interview Fox for a Channel 4<\/a> documentary about how this community\u2019s online vitriol spilled onto British streets last year after the mindless murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport. Nearly 10 days of disorder gripped the UK, with attacks on mosques and asylum seeker hotels resulting in nearly 1,300 arrests.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Laurence<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLaurence Fox<\/p>\n

\n\tOver dinner, Fox ultimately rejected Reed\u2019s advances (he was, in Reed\u2019s words, \u201ctoo nervous\u201d about losing control of the narrative), but the radicalization he has experienced echoes through the film. One Day in Southport instead features other populist preachers like Carl Benjamin, a YouTuber who espouses the great replacement theory and once openly debated raping Labour lawmaker Jess Phillips.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBenjamin is not a fixture on mainstream British television networks, but Reed wanted to get inside the minds of those who stoked the thuggish violence of last summer. The film is a \u201cfull throttle journey into [the] mayhem,\u201d unspooling how social media disinformation about Southport killer, Axel Rudakubana, translated into real-world violence against immigrants and Muslims.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted it to be very visceral,\u201d Reed tells Deadline. \u201cMy job as a documentary maker is to interview people with direct knowledge of what happened.\u201d Speaking over Zoom, he adds: \u201cI don\u2019t give platforms to goodies, and I don\u2019t give platforms to baddies \u2026 it\u2019s the story that has the platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Leaving Neverland<\/a> director admits to being a little sheepish about turning over the film to Channel 4 because of the nature of his interviewees, but says the broadcaster was fully supportive. Ironically, as Fox proved, it was harder to convince some contributors to overcome their reticence about the so-called \u201cmainstream media,\u201d but Reed says \u2014 with something of a glint in his eye \u2014 \u201cwe\u2019re persuasive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmos Pictures<\/a> was nearly three-quarters of the way through the edit when Reed persuaded a Southport victim and her family to recount the events of July 29, 2024. The film opens with Rudakubana\u2019s unthinkable atrocity, juxtaposing it with the powerful words of the survivor, who reads the victim statement she planned to make in court. The family, speaking on camera for the first time, has to be anonymized because of a court order, but instead of silhouetting them, Reed fills the screen with just their eyes. It makes for intense viewing.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDan Reed<\/p>\n

\n\tThe contribution of the victims serves to highlight the disconnect between their horror and the disorder. The rioters said they were demonstrating in the name of the dead children, but they were denounced by those who suffered tragedy. It\u2019s this unwelcome legacy of the attack that is the real preoccupation of the film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt makes the title, One Day in Southport, somewhat incongruous because the documentary dwells in the fallout, not the events of July 29. \u201cI don\u2019t choose the titles,\u201d Reed says. If he had his way, the documentary would have been called Island of Strangers, a reference to a speech made by Keir Starmer in May, when the prime minister attempted to demonstrate grip on the immigration crisis. The \u201cisland of strangers\u201d quote proved divisive and Starmer later admitted he regretted using the phrase.<\/p>\n

\n\tReed says it shows how Starmer has failed to connect with disillusioned voters. The film shows the PM being heckled as he laid flowers in Southport before leaving without speaking to mourners on the street. \u201cAt that time, people needed connection with a personality, which is why they were so vulnerable to [Nigel] Farage and [Tommy] Robinson, because they speak to you as though they understand you,\u201d Reed reflects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOne Day in Southport splices in the social media posts of these men at the time. It also features Andrew Tate, who framed the Southport attack as an invader slaughtering the daughters of natives. \u201cWhat he\u2019s saying is utter nonsense, and it\u2019s all based on disinformation, but it sounds epic, it stirs the blood,\u201d Reed adds.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWeyman Bennett<\/p>\n

\n\tHe thinks \u201cdarkness and chaos\u201d await the country if these voices are censored or ignored. Recent unrest outside an asylum seeker hotel in Epping shows that the issues of last summer have not gone away. Paraphrasing Weyman Bennett, the Stand Up to Racism boss interviewed in One Day in Southport, Reed says: \u201cWe need to engage. We need to argue. We need to counter what they say, which speaks to a lot of people, with arguments about why they\u2019re wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is the reason why Reed made One Day. It\u2019s also why he is willing to listen to his old friend Fox when the rest of the entertainment industry has turned its back on the actor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOne Day in Southport premieres on Channel 4 tonight at 9PM local time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Long before Dan Reed was making BAFTA-winning documentaries about paedophiles, terror attacks, and problematic pop princes, he…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":88685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[59427,38387,59428,171,59429,53,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-88684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-amos-pictures","9":"tag-channel-4","10":"tag-dan-reed","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-leaving-neverland","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114908359807679326","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}