THE STORY
In a world where fear surrounds the birthing experience, director Liat Ron embarks on a transformative journey to redefine the narrative. After an unacknowledged traumatic yet all-too-common first birth, she discovers the power of HypnoBirthing—a hidden gem in the birthing world. Through her own empowering journey and encounters with parents, medical professionals, and birth workers, she uncovers the profound impact of releasing fear and trauma and embracing a new approach to childbirth.
This groundbreaking documentary delves into the untold stories, challenges the existing birth culture, and explores the potential for enjoyable, fear-free births. Fear and Now shows how we can be in the driver’s seat of our births and how we can profoundly enjoy our births even within a system that tells us we certainly cannot. It illuminates a path towards a birthing revolution, from within the system.​
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HOW DID IT ALL START?
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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.
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TRANSFORMATION ALL AROUND
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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 very limited 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. More discoveries were made than we were prepared for. We can't wait to share our film with the world!​​​​​​
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​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....
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IT'S TIME!
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Baby Fear and Now (AKA FAN) is already crowning! But in order for it to be born into the world, we need funds to complete our sound editing, and for festivals, legal help, marketing and other elements that will ensure that our film is available to view/stream by anyone and everyone!
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So! Are you on your way? Please join our labor support team and let's birth this film together! It's not about just helping with the last push, it's about joining a family, a family that is here to change how we all think about birth, how we feel about birth, and how we actually birth. We are here to bring light and hope to our world that is so overly saturated with bad news and dark realities over which we have no control. We are here to revolutionize birth, from within the system. Let's birth this movement together! Let's revise our collective birth narrative together!
