Unrest (2017 film)

Unrest
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jennifer Brea
Written by	Jennifer Brea Kim Roberts
Produced by	Jennifer Brea Lindsey Dryden Patricia E. Gillespie Alysa Nahmias Deborah Hoffmann
Cinematography	Sam Heesen Christian Laursen
Edited by	Kim Roberts Emiliano Battista
Music by	Bear McCreary
Production company	Shella Films
Distributed by	Shella Films
Release date	January 20, 2017 (2017-01-20) (Sundance)
Running time	97 minutes
Country	USA

Unrest is a 2017 documentary film produced and directed by Jennifer Brea.^[1]^[2] The film tells the story of how Jennifer and her new husband faced an illness that struck Jennifer just before they married. Initially dismissed by doctors, she starts filming herself to document her illness and connects with others who are home- or bedbound with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.

The documentary was produced over a four year period, in which Brea was mostly bed-bound. The documentary shows Brea's route to diagnosis and the world of other people homebound with the illness. Unrest was shortlisted for the Academy Award for best documentary feature, and won several film festival awards, including the jury award for editing at the Sundance Film Festival.

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Synopsis

The documentary follows Jennifer Brea, who was a PhD student at Harvard before she fell ill at age 28.^{[citation needed]} Getting progressively more ill, she is initially disbelieved by doctors, who attribute her symptoms to stress. She starts a video diary to demonstrate the severity of her illness to her doctors, which later grew into the Unrest documentary. She finally receives a diagnosis of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. Online, she and her husband search for answers and she connects with others with the illness.^[3]

A woman in the US faces a divorce, as her husband believed he was enabling her illness. Only after their daughter develops ME do they reconcile. A young woman in the UK has not been able to leave her bed in years. In Denmark, a girl is taken by policy into a psychiatric hospital against her will, as authorities believed her parents were nurturing her illness.

The film is interspersed with interviews of scientists and immunologists, who talk about the limited research funding available for the disease, which they attribute to the difficult-to-understand nature of symptoms and to the fact that most people with ME are women.^[4]

Production

The production of Unrest began when Brea picked up the camera to film her symptoms because she was being dismissed by doctors in the spring of 2012.^[5]

Brea used a Skype teleprompter to conduct interviews, and eventually found a way to stream an on-set camera to her computer. Gradually, she built a global team. The whole process took four years. She was bedridden throughout much of the production of the film, conducting interviews on Skype and directing remotely with producers and crews around the world.^[6] The film is a combination of professionally shot vérité, self-filmed home videos, and screen captures of online interviews.^[7]^{[additional citation(s) needed]}

"Unrest," initially named "Canary in a Coal Mine," got its initial funding from a 2013 Kickstarter campaign. Further funding came from various grants and fellowships. Impact Partners invested in the documentary during post-production. The overall production budget reached high six-figures over four years and was financed by a mix of crowdfunding and grants (70%), equity (20%), with a 10% unaccounted for when the documentary was released.^[8]

Release

The film premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival on January 20.^[9]^[10] It was screened during the 2017 SXSW Film Festival in March; The Melbourne International Film Festival^[11] and the New Zealand International Film Festival in August 2017;^[12] Sheffield Doc Fest; CPH:Dox; and Hotdocs.^[11] In fall of 2017, the film opened theatrically in the United States and United Kingdom.^[8]

The film aired in the United States as part of the Independent Lens series on the Public Broadcasting Service in January 2018.^[13]^[14] It became available on Netflix on January 15, 2018,^[15] and available for free on YouTube since May 2023.^[16]

Reception

The film was well-received. Unrest was shortlisted for the Academy Award for best documentary feature,^[17] but was not one of the final five nominations.^[18] It furthermore won an award for the best documentary feature at the RiverRun International Film Festival and the Nashville Film Festival.^[19]^[11] It was nominated for an Emmy Award on Outstanding Documentary Editing and won the Special Jury Award for Editing at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival,^[11]^[20] and the 2017 Sheffield Doc/Fest Illuminate Award.^[21]

Critics in particular praised the intimacy of the documentary. The Los Angeles Times called the film, "an existential exploration of the meaning of life while battling a crippling chronic illness."^[4] The film was described as an engaging watch, despite being filmed mostly in the bedrooms of the featured ME patients.^[22] The documentary explores how the illness put strains on the marriage of Brae and her husband.^[23]^[24]

The advocacy in the documentary was considered effective. Glenn Kenny, writing for RogerEbert.com, describes Brea as "relentless" in documenting the severity of her symptoms, which includes periods of paralysis and hypersensitivity to light.^[25] The Los Angeles Times called the film "a stirring call to action".^[4] While Unrest does not propose a direct solution for people with ME/CFS, it does showcase hope in the #MillionsMissing protests, which sought greater recognition for the illness.^[26]