Unrest

Jennifer Brea's 2017 documentary takes her own illness as its subject. While doing a doctorate at Harvard she is put to bed by a high fever and never gets up as she was; the doctors she sees treat it as psychological and offer no explanation. Eventually she is diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, a disease long not taken seriously in medicine and given almost no research funding. Brea sets a camera beside her bed and begins filming herself, connecting online with patients in other parts of the world, and the documentary tells four families' stories together. The hardest passages concern patients who have lived in darkened rooms for years. The film is both a personal record and a case file on medical neglect. Who it's for: viewers who can take documentaries about the health system and chronic illness. Who it's not for: anyone expecting a hopeful close; the film does not give one.