Am I OK?, which premiered Monday at the Sundance Film Festival, is a dramedy about a thirty-something-year-old woman coming out as gay to her best friend and realizing that not having everything figured out at this point in life is quite OK.

Am I OK? is focused on Lucy’s coming out and her journey to self-discovery. Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson, is not so much into the nice guy helping her out in her apartment and hoping to ‘shake hands after dinner’ as she puts it. Her best friend, Jane, played by Sonoya Mizuno – the kind of friend who finishes your sentences and knows how you order at restaurants – is, however, eager to see Lucy end up in bed with the guy. Until one night, when Lucy breaks the news to her, while they are both curled up in bed together: she thinks she likes women.

“It actually started as a friendship story,” said writer Lauren Pomerantz, for whom Am I OK? is her first screenwriting credit, when talking at a Q&A at the Sundance Film Festival. “And then, when I was struggling with my coming out and my own little journey, I realized that’s the story I want to tell also, so I sort of merged the two.”

The story appealed to directors Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne, who are a couple in real life, but who had never done a project together before.

“I would say because Stephanie and I have worked so much together over the years in different capacities: producing, writing, creating, acting,” said Tig Notaro. “I always add in raising kids. It’s huge. And we’ve directed separately. It just felt like it seemed like a natural progression, and I think that we’ve both reached a point where we prefer to work together than apart.”

For Stephanie Allynne, reading Lauren’s script was a “This is what we’re into” moment:

“We like these personal stories. We like a lot of heart. There’s some drama to it, and also in the comedy, there’s subtlety to it. It hit everything that we like, and it seemed like, ‘If we’re going to do this, this is the perfect thing to do it with for the first one.’”

The friendship between Lucy and Jane is central to the story. The moment that Lucy confesses to Jane that she thinks she is gay is a pivotal moment in the film, where they need to redefine their friendship.

“I feel like the coming out scene was a scene we talked about a lot of, like, ‘OK, this is where they connect in this moment of female friendship and the intimacy when you’re in bed together and … It’s friends.’”

However, this moment, and the fact that Jane is planning to move back to the UK for work, is changing the dynamic of the two women’s relationship, and they need to navigate that and figure out how to move on from there. Lucy, who works at an upscale spa, is attracted to the flirtatious masseuse Brittany, played by Kiersey Clemons, and is confused by the mixed messages Brittany seems to be sending: Is Brittany gay or is she not?

“I also really, really loved the scenes with Kiersey and Dakota in Lucy’s apartment,” said Stephanie Allynne. “That whole journey they have together of their first date and the try-on party and then them kissing, I just was like, ‘Oh God, these two.’ And Dakota’s earnestness and vulnerability and fragility just killed me.”

Dakota Johnson, who also plays her first-time role as a producer on the film with her company TeaTime Pictures, was eager to take on the role of Lucy, who is confused about her life and asks the question of Jane; “Am I OK?”

“I just really liked the idea of a woman in her thirties not having everything figured out already,” said Dakota Johnson. “I think I prefer the world in which people are allowed to continue to grow and figure themselves out for their entire lives. I think this narrative that we’ve seen on screen in coming-of-age movies or buddy comedies, is that you have to be a fully realized person at a certain point, which is usually like in your twenties, which is impossible. People in their twenties are idiots and don’t have anything figured out.”

Jane also has issues of her own. While she herself has decided that she will move to London, her loving boyfriend, Danny, played by Jermaine Fowler, has decided the London lifestyle might not be for him. This shakes Jane’s world a little, too.

“I connected to being a woman in my thirties,” said Sonoya Mizuno of the role of Jane. “And not feeling like I have everything figured out, and trying to juggle a career and relationships, and wanting to have a family, and sexuality, and all of the things that women have to contend with.”