Sundance ’17: ‘Unrest’ Directed by Jennifer Brea
by Peter Belsito
This is a very important and well done film. It is a documentary exposing our society’s and ESPECIALLY the medical professions’ almost criminal failure to recognize, treat and develop cures for a too common illness of the human immune system which is commonly known as “CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME”. Sufferers number in the millions and the rate of women infected is very high.
The Director Jennifer Brea while suffering from this debilitating disease uses her camera via social media to connect with victims around the world, to discuss treatment and ideas for coping. And to comfort one another who understand their pain and trauma while often they are passed over by society and their own doctors. This while many of them are literally dying in their youth.
Jennifer, a Harvard PhD student, was signing a check at a restaurant when she found she could not write her own name. Months before her wedding, she became progressively more ill, losing the ability even to sit in a wheelchair. When doctors told her it was “all in her head,” she turned her camera on herself and her community, a hidden world of millions confined to their homes bedrooms by Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), commonly called chronic fatigue syndrome.
WHAT IS MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS? (“CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME”)
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) is a systemic neuroimmune condition characterized by post-exertional malaise (a severe worsening of symptoms after even minimal exertion). It causes dysregulation of both the immune system and the nervous system. The effects of ME are devastating enough to leave 25% of patients housebound or bed bound.
In the years following Jennifer has episodes of not being able to move, collapsing in her house and needing around the clock basic care. Her family struggles especially with her caring husband are beautifully filmed.
Via a skype connection she befriends a young British woman with much worse symptoms who has been helpless for over 10 years and whose disease and symptoms may soon prove fatal.
One of the most shocking stories in this film is from a Danish family with a sick child whose government sent armed police to their home and seized their sick daughter and placed her in an institution thereafter forbidding any family contact. The state had decided the family gave the daughter a mental disease when it was clear the daughter suffered from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), or chronic fatigue syndrome.
The beauty of this film is the deep personal revelations throughout of science amid human suffering and the ways in which the characters overcome frightful pain and uncertainty.
“Unrest” is made by an award-winning team and is supported by the Sundance Institute, Chicken & Egg Pictures, the Harnisch Foundation, BRITDOC’s Good Pitch, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Fledgling Fund, IFP, and over 2,593 Kickstarter backers. It will premiere in the documentary competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
For more on “Unrest”, visit its website at http://www.unrest.film/
