Unrest

A Swiss watchmaking town at the end of the nineteenth century. In the factory, Josephine makes the wheel that swings at the heart of a mechanical watch; the part is called the unrest wheel. In those same years the town runs on four separate measures of time at once: factory time, municipal time, telegraph time and church time. As Josephine comes into contact with the local anarchist circle, she starts to see how time and wages are organised. Cyril Schäublin does not use the familiar language of historical drama. The camera mostly leaves people at the edge of the frame, conversations overlap, and the important event is never emphasised. That cool method is part of the argument: it describes how an order is built by refusing to make that order look natural. The film screened in the Encounters section of the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival, where Schäublin won Best Director. He comes from a family of watchmakers himself. Who it's for: Viewers who like formally experimental historical films and cinema that thinks about labour and time. Who it's not for: Dramatic momentum is deliberately absent and the characters are kept at a distance. It is a hard film if you want conventional narrative.