One of the most fascinating gems on the festival circuit last year was Cyril Schäublin’s carefully observed drama Unrest. Set in a 19th-century watchmaking town in Switzerland, the Berlinale winner and NYFF selection follows Josephine, a young factory worker, who produces the unrest wheel, swinging in the heart of the mechanical watch. Exposed to new ways of organizing money, time and labor, she gets involved with the local movement of the anarchist watchmakers, where she meets Russian traveler Pyotr Kropotkin. Ahead of a May 5 release from KimStim, the new trailer and poster have now arrived.
Rory O’Connor said in his review, “The best word to describe Unrest is “clever.” It isn’t on the level of the artisans and thinkers it lovingly portrays—all the graphers (geo, carto, photo) and the ists (social, anarch, horolog, and so on)—but not so far off; and more than enough to be worthy of their story. Consider the title’s neat duality. “Unrest,” as the film explains, is another name for a wristwatch’s balance wheel: an instrument that, working in tandem with the spiral and escapement, creates the mechanism that makes it tick. Then there is the other kind.”
See the trailer and poster below.
Unrest opens on May 5 and will expand.