What would a world without anxiety even look like? Life might feel more manageable, but ultimately, would things work out for the better? Director Christine Chevarie-Lessard’s O Fear, O Night explores the uneasy world of anxiety, delving deep into the fear driving so many of our inner dialogues. Chevarie-Lessard sits down with an Anxiety Anonymous group, gathering various perspectives and discovering how, in each unique case, the experience of living with anxiety is shockingly universal.

O Fear, O Night does an exceptional job of humanizing the experience, conveying what it’s like to exist on a perpetual hamster wheel of fear, shame, and dread. But the film’s beauty lies in its affirming message: the secret to “conquering” anxiety may be recognizing that anxious doom-spiraling comes from an inability to sit with our discomfort. The film posits that anxiety can be a reasonable response to an unreasonable world. Once we stop running from that discomfort and instead make space for it, the hamster wheel slows, and those overwhelming experiences become easier to manage.