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It’s hard to think of a better title than the one writer-director Cyril Schäublin came up with for his second feature, which chronicles the political fervor swelling beneath the surface of a quiet, picturesque industrial town in late-19th century Switzerland.
That town, nestled cozily beside the Jura Mountains, is home to a factory where workers meticulously assemble watches by hand, setting the tiny balance wheel, known as an unrueh (unrest), with the type of scientific precision that the Swiss are famous for. But the real unrest is happening all around them, as the burgeoning anarchist movement takes hold of the factory as well as the community, pitting the workers — almost all of them women — against the powers-that-be who run everything like clockwork, reducing humans to mere cogs in the wheel of the capitalist machine.
The film occasionally shifts its focus onto...
It’s hard to think of a better title than the one writer-director Cyril Schäublin came up with for his second feature, which chronicles the political fervor swelling beneath the surface of a quiet, picturesque industrial town in late-19th century Switzerland.
That town, nestled cozily beside the Jura Mountains, is home to a factory where workers meticulously assemble watches by hand, setting the tiny balance wheel, known as an unrueh (unrest), with the type of scientific precision that the Swiss are famous for. But the real unrest is happening all around them, as the burgeoning anarchist movement takes hold of the factory as well as the community, pitting the workers — almost all of them women — against the powers-that-be who run everything like clockwork, reducing humans to mere cogs in the wheel of the capitalist machine.
The film occasionally shifts its focus onto...
- 10/10/2022
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In a valley in the Swiss canton of Bern dominated by the local watchmaking industry, the first ever International Anarchist Congress was held in 1872. And inside a traditionally made clockwork watch, such as the factories of Bern would have been producing at the time, there is a tiny spiral wheel that balances the mechanism, called the unrueh — the unrest.
This dainty coincidence of echoing terminology at most might raise a “huh” from those of us into wordplay and social history and Twitter accounts that exclusively post images of machinery at work. But for Swiss director Cyril Schäublin, it becomes the kernel of “Unrest,” a gorgeously playful oddity glimmering with insight into ideology, photography, cartography, telegraphy, celebrity, solidarity, the flow of capital, the unruliness of time and the somehow noble lunacy of trying to tame such a massive concept into a brass doodad small enough to fit in a waistcoat pocket.
This dainty coincidence of echoing terminology at most might raise a “huh” from those of us into wordplay and social history and Twitter accounts that exclusively post images of machinery at work. But for Swiss director Cyril Schäublin, it becomes the kernel of “Unrest,” a gorgeously playful oddity glimmering with insight into ideology, photography, cartography, telegraphy, celebrity, solidarity, the flow of capital, the unruliness of time and the somehow noble lunacy of trying to tame such a massive concept into a brass doodad small enough to fit in a waistcoat pocket.
- 2/16/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
The following essay was produced as part of the 2017 Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring film critics that took place during the 70th edition of the Locarno Film Festival.
Swiss cinema isn’t exactly stuck in a rut. Its artistically-challenging documentaries are thriving: Markus Imhoofs meditation on bees in the climate-change era “More Than Honey” from 2012 was released in 29 countries around the globe, and last year, the animated “My Life as Zucchini” was nominated for an Oscar. Historically, however, Switzerland has given rise to an outstanding list of worldly auteurs such as Claude Goretta, Alain Tanner and Jean-Luc Godard. Why haven’t we heard much about young Swiss talent making the leap out of the small alpine state?
There is one major exception here: Ursula Meier is a Geneva-based cinematographer and filmmaker who has found a string of international successes. With “Sister” in 2012, she received the Silver Bear at the Berlinale.
Swiss cinema isn’t exactly stuck in a rut. Its artistically-challenging documentaries are thriving: Markus Imhoofs meditation on bees in the climate-change era “More Than Honey” from 2012 was released in 29 countries around the globe, and last year, the animated “My Life as Zucchini” was nominated for an Oscar. Historically, however, Switzerland has given rise to an outstanding list of worldly auteurs such as Claude Goretta, Alain Tanner and Jean-Luc Godard. Why haven’t we heard much about young Swiss talent making the leap out of the small alpine state?
There is one major exception here: Ursula Meier is a Geneva-based cinematographer and filmmaker who has found a string of international successes. With “Sister” in 2012, she received the Silver Bear at the Berlinale.
- 8/22/2017
- by Timo Posselt
- Indiewire
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