92 minutes of people screaming inside while Amsterdam keeps cycling past.
In Fear, documentary filmmaker Michiel van Erp creates a collage of inhabitants of the city of Amsterdam who struggle with various anxiety disorders. Today, more patients with anxiety disorders seek professional help than those who suffer from depression, making anxiety the number one mental illness in the Netherlands. This film will show how a small number of those patients attempt to overcome their fears, in order to get on with their lives in the crowded cosmopolitan city that Amsterdam is today.
Direction
Van Erp's patient observation—no spectacle, just presence.
Editing
Collage structure mirrors fragmented experience of anxiety itself.
Director
Michiel van Erp
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
2009 Dutch mental health policy was shifting from institutional care to 'reintegration'—this film captures that painful transition.
The Amsterdam backdrop isn't accidental; the film argues cosmopolitan cities are designed for the fearless, excluding the anxious by architecture.
NL
