KimStim debuted the official trailer for Unrest (Unrueh), a Swiss film filled with a complex mix of love, anarchism, and wristwatches, all set in the Swiss watchmaking town of Saint-Imier in the 1870s.

In the film, Josephine finds employment in a watch factory. She is instructed in the production of the axis of unrest (Unruh), a minute piece causing the swing in the center of the mechanical watch. Before getting paid and in order to finance her new life in the village, she borrows money from the local bank. Soon uneasy with the organization of work and possession in the village and its factory, she joins the local anarchist worker movement of the watchmakers, the Fédération Jurassienne. There she meets Piotr, a moony Russian traveller. While straying through the close-by woods, Josephine and Piotr ask themselves: Who tells us the story about ourselves? Aren’t time, money, debts and the government all but fictions?

Starring in the film are Clara Gostynski, Alexei Evstratov, Monika Stalder, Hélio Thiémard, Li Tavor, Valentin Merz, Laurence Bretignier, Laurent Ferrero, Mayo Irion, and Daniel Stähli.

Directed by Cyril Schäublin, Unrest premiered at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival, and will open in theaters in New York & LA on May 5th, 2023.

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.

Watch the official trailer for Unrest