The Cinematheque

Vancouver Premiere

“A film of extraordinary beauty and precision … Schäublin has produced a film set in the past with an eye towards the future, positing the potential for new means of solidarity and refusal.”

Andréa Picard, TIFF

Among the highpoints of the festival circuit last year was Swiss filmmaker Cyril Schäublin’s unassuming sophomore feature, a quiet period piece, set in the Swiss Alps, that examines weighty themes of time, labour, and power with formal sophistication and disarming charm. In the Jura Mountains, circa 1870, the watchmakers of Saint-Imier valley are subjected to the dehumanizing effects of an industrialized workplace and new global economy. Josephine (Clara Gostynski), a young factory worker, is drawn to the region’s flowering anarchist movement and to recently arrived cartographer Pyotr Kropotkin (Alexei Evstratov), a Russian anarchist mapping the area. Though the aforementioned characters (the latter based on a historical figure) offer entry into the milieu, Schäublin’s puckish film is far more interested in ideas—chiefly, the measurement and monetization of time. Shot in calculated compositions that reify the movie’s clever designs, Unrest is an intelligent and enchanting portrait of political resistance at the dawning of our modern, hyper-capitalist epoch.

In Swiss-German, French, and Russian with English subtitles

One of the best films of 2022 (#4)
Cinema Scope, Artforum (James Quandt)

“A sublimely peculiar and playful meditation on anarchy and watchmaking in 1870s Switzerland … Cyril Schäublin’s intellectually ticklish, formally daring delight marks him out as a singular new filmmaking talent.”

Jessica Kiang, Variety