Guided by Fred Rogers’ call to “look for the helpers,” filmmaker Benjamin Wagner investigates how chronic stress and trauma shape American life, weaving his own story with those of experts and neighbors to reveal how healing and connection are still possible in even the most anxious communities.

Having experienced firsthand how stress can quietly build beneath even the most outwardly successful lives, Wagner began to recognize its imprint everywhere, in the strain on families, in classrooms and workplaces, and in the growing sense of disconnection felt across communities. What began as a personal reckoning became a broader inquiry into what is happening to us, and what it takes to feel steady, connected, and well.

In Friends & Neighbors, Wagner brings viewers into a deeply human story that is both intimate and widely shared. Through moments from his own life, including a high-pressure career, personal loss, and the long arc of recovery, he connects lived experience to a larger understanding of how stress and trauma shape the body, the brain, and the way we relate to one another. Along the way, the film offers a clear and accessible lens on why, in moments of overwhelm, we struggle to think clearly, stay calm, or feel like ourselves, and how those patterns, once understood, can begin to shift.

At the same time, the film opens outward, meeting people who are helping to restore a sense of connection and possibility in their communities. People like Anne Kubitsky, founder of the Look for the Good Project, who brings social-emotional wellness and resilience into schools; Sarah McBride, U.S. Representative, who speaks to the essential role of belonging and human connection in public life; Michael Tyler, award-winning children’s author, who transformed his own childhood trauma into stories that help young people feel seen; and Logan Herring, CEO of The WRK Group, whose community-based work addresses the long-term impacts of inequality through food, housing, and health initiatives.

The film also features practitioners working directly with how stress lives in the body and mind, including Kelli Rae Powell, board-certified music therapist and EMDR practitioner; Matthew Tousignant, somatic psychotherapist; and Lauren Scott, certified school counselor, each offering accessible, everyday pathways to healing through music, movement, and emotional awareness. Leaders like Alonna Berry, former Delaware Director of Community and Family Services and the state’s first Trauma-Informed Care Coordinator, and Winden Rowe, Director of the Center for Change, help reframe how we understand trauma itself, shifting it from something rare and extreme to something widely experienced and deeply human.

These stories are not presented as prescriptions or distant ideals, but as real, relatable examples of how people navigate challenge, repair relationships, and find their way forward. The film invites audiences in, not as patients or problems to be solved, but as participants in a shared human experience, one where understanding ourselves and each other opens the door to change.

By making space for these stories, Friends & Neighbors offers something both grounding and hopeful: a way to better understand what we carry, a language for what we feel, and a reminder that healing does not happen alone. It happens in connection, in community, and in the everyday acts of showing up for ourselves and for one another.

Because, as Fred Rogers often said, when we make the "mentionable manageable," we create the conditions for something new. And when we look for the helpers, we begin to see that a way forward is already taking shape, all around us.

Friends & Neighbors premiered at the Heartland Film Festival and screened at Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, Wilmington, and Rehoboth Film Festivals. The film is slated for national release on PBS in May 2026.