William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

"When Sarah and I look back on our father's life, this is the moment we are most proud of. The moment the gloves came off. Dad was radicalized."

In this documentary, Emily and Sarah Kunstler daughters of famed attorney William Kunstler - the lawyer behind some of the most notorious trials in American history - take a deeper look at the man whose name became as famous as his cases.

The infamous trial of the "Chicago 8," the Attica Prison Massacre, the American Indian Movement's fight against the government at Wounded Knee, the case of the Central Park Jogger, mobster John Gotti.

All were a part of the life and work of William Kunstler.

What his daughters, Sarah and Emily have made with this film is nothing short of Riveting. "Disturbing the Universe" is a look not only at the struggles Kunstler became a part of both inside and out but at the questions that were left behind for his daughters to ask about their father.

The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War would define the beginning of Kunstler's impressive career and the film spares no details. It examines the validity of each case as much as Kunstler's thinking behind taking each one on as a personal mission for justice.

There is a closer look at what took place inside the courtroom of the famed trial of "The Chicago 8" and hearing Kunstler argue against a judge who had gone so far as to have activist Bobby Seale bound and gagged is almost painful as the filmmakers use audio files to recreate the trial and all at once Kunstler becomes a proverbial David a frightening Goliath.

But Emily, who narrates the film explain that where his career began, a troubled road lay ahead and she and her sister who were both born in the late 1970s would see a different side to their father in his later cases. Cases that included mobsters and militant extremists and cold blooded killers. The young girls lived in fear for their lives.

What took their father from a brilliant young lawyer to a Civil Rights activist, a man for the people to a man disenchanted by the legal system?

Sarah and Emily revisit the massacre at Attica prison massacre in New York in 1971 and the fight of the American Indians at Wounded Knee. Two events that would rip Kunstler apart and put him back together again.

The documentary is filled with insight and historical fact. Bonus features include audio files and bonus footage of Kunstler during some of the most important moments in history. It is an intimate look at a name and a man whose contribution to the American legal system is nothing short of noteworthy.

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