With Cyril Schäublin’s Unrest, an official selection of the 60th New York Film Festival, opening this Friday with filmmaker Q&As on Friday & Saturday at 7pm and on Sunday at 4:45pm, we’re pleased to premiere an exclusive clip from the film, courtesy of KimStim. Watch below and get tickets here.
A film of immense delicacy and precision, Cyril Schäublin’s complexly woven timepiece is set in the hushed environs of the Swiss watchmaking town of Saint-Imier in the 1870s. In this unlikely place, a youthful Pyotr Kropotkin, who would become a noted anarchist and socialist philosopher, experiences a quiet revolution, finding himself inspired by the buzzing activity of the town’s denizens, from the photographers and cartographers surveying its people and land to the growing anarchist collective at the local watermill raising funds for strikes abroad, to the organizing workers at the watch factory, whose craft is depicted with exacting detail and devotion. Schäublin’s abstracted, geometric visual approach reinforces the singularly contemplative nature of his project: this is a film about time—its tyranny as well as its comforts—and how it relates to work, leisure, and the larger processes that shape history. An NYFF60 Main Slate selection. A KimStim release with support from Swiss Films.
