Film shares one woman's struggle with ME

Queen's Film Theatre in Belfast is hosting two screenings of Unrest, a Sundance award-winning film by Jennifer Brea, on November 11 and 12 at 3.30pm.

The film follows twenty-eight year-old Jennifer Brea who is working on her PhD at Harvard and is months away from marrying the love of her life when she gets a mysterious fever that leaves her bedridden and looking for answers. Disbelieved by doctors yet determined to live, she turns her camera on herself and discovers a hidden world of millions confined to their homes and bedrooms by ME, commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome.

Unrest tells the first-person story of Jennifer and her husband, Omar, newlyweds grappling with how to live in the face of a debilitating lifelong illness. But it is also a global story about an international community of patients with a serious, life-altering illness — millions suffering invisibly and left at the margins of medicine and science.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The film launches with an attached social impact campaign, Time for Unrest, which aims to increase the public’s knowledge of this little known disease, mobilize the patient and ally community, encourage empathetic care from medical practitioners, and encourage more research in countries throughout the world.

Local charity Hope 4 ME & Fibro Northern Ireland, which has been providing educational accredited conferences for both professionals and patients since 2011, is offering free tickets and information packs to medical students wishing to attend the screenings. QUB administrators are supporting the charity’s free offer through on site advertising to students.

Hope 4 ME and Fibro can be contacted via email at [email protected] or by calling 07712892834.

Related topics: