Jennifer Brea

Jennifer Brea is an American documentary filmmaker and activist. Her debut feature, Unrest, premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and received the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award For Editing. Brea also co-created a virtual reality film which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.

Brea was a Ph.D student at Harvard University when she became suddenly ill with a high fever and became bedridden. She was initially diagnosed with conversion disorder and eventually, myalgic encephalomyelitis, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In 2013 she began making a documentary film from bed about her experience. In 2014 The Root recognized her as one of the hundred most influential African-Americans in its Root100 list, and in 2015 she co-founded #MEAction, a global network of patients living with ME.

MEAction went on to spearhead the #MillionsMissing movement, a patient-centered protest in which hundreds of empty shoes were displayed in order to represent the 25% of patients with ME who are housebound or bedbound.

In June 2016, Brea gave a TED Talk on her experience as a person with ME. The TED Talk was published on the TED website in January 2017.

In 2012, Brea married Omar Wasow, co-founder of BlackPlanet and a professor at Princeton University.

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