unbound — sara nesson

Twenty bodies. One thread of movement. Unbound is a short dance film created by individuals living with ME/CFS and Long COVID, exploring the tension between constraint and expression, stillness and vitality.

Born from the personal experiences of dramatist and director Sara Nesson and founder of Unfixed Media Kimberly Warner—both artists living with chronic illness—Unbound is a collaborative dance film that reframes disability through the language of movement. Each participant contributes a 15-second self-recorded video, often from beds, chairs, or other adapted environments. Rather than hiding their limitations, the film leans into them—amplifying the truth of a body that aches to move and the creative resilience that emerges when movement is redefined.

The result is a visual dialogue—a "passing of the dance"—where one gesture flows into the next, echoing collective struggle and shared joy. With a painterly color palette and poetic editing style, Unbound invites audiences into the lived reality of ME/CFS and Long COVID, offering not just awareness but a reframing: illness as choreography, constraint as canvas.

currently in production

the cast

why this film matters

Unbound is more than a dance film—it’s a restoration of voice, agency, and creative identity for those long silenced by chronic illness. For many participants, movement has become dangerous, painful, or entirely inaccessible. And yet, a whisper of motion remains—sometimes a hand gesture, a head tilt, the lift of a finger—and that is where Unbound begins.

In a world that often equates stillness with defeat, Unbound reclaims stillness as a site of artistry. It resists the binaries of sick/well, dancer/non-dancer, and asks instead: What does it mean to move when movement is no longer easy? What does it mean to express joy, rage, grief, or sensuality when your body is confined to a bed?

This film becomes an archive of what disabled life looks like—from the defiant to the mundane, from the theatrical to the tender. It celebrates disabled joy, disabled ambivalence, and disabled existence as vital contributions to culture, rather than deviations from it.