Unrest

Unrest (2017) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Jennifer Brea — a Harvard PhD student who fell ill with ME/CFS at 28 and refused to disappear quietly.

Doctors told her the symptoms were psychological. She turned her bedroom into a film set. From there, Brea connected with four other families across the US, Denmark and Britain, each ground down by the same illness and the same medical dismissal. Whitney Dafoe, once an avid traveller, now lives in near-total darkness; others can barely hold a conversation without crashing for days. The disease had no approved treatment and almost no research funding — not because it was rare, but because it had been written off as anxiety.

What makes the film work is Brea's refusal to play victim. She is the scientist, the journalist and the subject all at once, and the result premiered at Sundance 2017, sparking real policy debate about a condition affecting an estimated 15 to 30 million people worldwide. Stream Unrest online on iFILM.