Unrest

In 2017, filmmaker Jennifer Brea released Unrest, a groundbreaking documentary that would forever change how the world views Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). What makes this film uniquely powerful is that it emerged not from academic distance, but from lived experience. Brea, a PhD candidate at Harvard, found her life upended when she developed a mysterious illness that left her bedridden, unable to work, and largely dismissed by the medical establishment.Rather than accepting invisibility, Brea turned her camera on herself and discovered a global community of millions suffering in silence. The result is a film that is simultaneously intimate and expansive, personal and political—a documentary that serves as both memoir and manifesto for one of medicine's most neglected patient populations.