SYNOPSIS
In a world where fear and trauma shape the birthing experience, Fear and Now redefines the narrative. After a far too common yet unacknowledged traumatic first birth, filmmaker Liat Ron discovers HypnoBirthing and embarks on a transformational journey, offering an unprecedented window into what birth can truly be. This trailblazing documentary reveals that safe, comfortable, enjoyable, and fear-free births are possible, even within a system that leads us to believe otherwise. Fear and Now shines a light on a birthing revolution already underway and calls on us to acknowledge and heal from the birth traumas we carry.
Fear and Now Moms
Tehana
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Jecca
Kim
Tathiana
Beth
Gigi
Holly
Liat
HOW DID IT ALL START?
With a debilitating lifelong phobia of giving birth, Liat’s first birth of her daughter was an unacknowledged trauma despite her attempts to properly prepare. Her second pregnancy added a new level of fear of repeating the various interventions she’d endured during her first birth. In her third trimester she stumbled upon a HypnoBirthing book in Barnes & Noble and decided to take a class, not because she believed HypnoBirthing was possible, but because she felt like she had nothing to lose. Liat went on to have an enjoyable, comfortable, intervention-free hospital birth of a 9.6 lbs baby boy and it was as pain-free as can be. Fear and Now started out as a mission to discover whether her experience was the rare miracle it appeared to be or simply a typicial HypnoBirth.
After a couple of years of massive research, she learned that her second birth had not been pure luck. It was just the normal result of HypnoBirthing practice, which she was led to determine was the best kept secret in the birthing world. With that realization, many new questions appeared, compelling her to create a documentary film that would answer them all.
TRANSFORMATION ALL AROUND
Fear and Now was inspired by that life-changing HypnoBirth 7 year ago, but her personal filming journey across the country and into herself turned out to be as life-changing as that birth...
Back in 2019, Liat joined forces with Sundance winner, cinematographer Shachar Langlev. Our first day of filming was meticulously scheduled for the end of March, 2020. Driven by a healthy dose of optimism with a side of denial, mid-March was when we finally decided to call it off. Wasn't there a scenario of two-week quarantine and done?
Cut to- July 2020. After a few months of adjusting (or more precisely, reluctantly surrendering) to uncharted territories of raw chaos, isolation, existential uncertainty and wiping groceries with Chlorox wipes, we found a safe way to begin filming!! We were a team of two overwhelmed sleep-deprived, pandemic-ridden parents of two small children each, with almost no funds but boundless passion and creative energy.
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We are immensely proud of what we have achieved in our two years of filming Fear and Now. We traveled the country, making deep connections with families whose pregnancies and births we followed as well as birth workers and physicians. We captured never-before-seen insider-view of HypnoBirthing that will shake up the birthing world. And needless to say, more discoveries were made than we were prepared for... We can't wait to share our film with the world!
A REVOLUTION FROM WITHIN...THE SYSTEM
Fear and Now introduces a new way to perceive birth and its aftereffects. It also shows the power in acknowledging and processing our birth traumas. Fear and Now will start a revolutionary birth movement that doesn’t require having to wait for our healthcare systems to change, and not only because they won’t any time soon but because we cannot afford to wait. Fear and Now shows that it’s possible to change how we birth and how we are born by working from within the system rather than draining our energies by fighting to dismantle it. HypnoBirthing as a mainstream birthing choice will not only save lives, but it will also open our society’s eyes to what birth can be.
WHAT ON EARTH IS HYPNOBIRTHING?
In short, HypnoBirthing is a birth preparation method, which puts the birthing person in control and in charge of their birthing process, leading people to having safe, gentle, enjoyable and very possibly pain-free births by using practical techniques to eliminate the fear-tension-pain cycle. The practice of HypnoBirthing has been proven to profoundly benefit ALL types of birth, including births that require medical intervention, induced births and surgical births. Fear and Now is first film to illuminating the impact of HypnoBirthing on pregnancy, childbirth and beyond. Along the way, it will bust all the misconceptions you may have about this strange word....
Director Statement
I didn’t plan on making a film.
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After the birth of my second child, I simply wanted to share the extraordinary experience I had using HypnoBirthing, a birth that was calm, comfortable, and pretty much pain-free. At first, I thought it was a rare miracle. But then I learned it wasn’t rare at all. It was a typical HypnoBirth. And yet, most people have never even heard of it.
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A fire was lit in me, and Fear and Now was born. I set out to explore how people HypnoBirth, and why something so transformative, so empowering, and so evidence-based remains unknown or out of reach for most Americans.
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I hadn’t expected my filming journey to be as life-changing as the birth that inspired it. While documenting others, my own trauma surfaced on camera and with it, the realization that so many of us carry birth traumas we don’t even recognize, because they’ve been so normalized. That became the second thread of the film.
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Fear and Now isn’t about fighting for the system to change. It’s about seeing what’s already possible, right now, within it. The future of birth is already here. We just haven’t all seen it yet.