Before Selena Gomez released Rare in 2020, the singer maintained a relatively low profile. She barely did interviews and briefly deactivated her social media accounts. The album — a candy-sweet assemblage of anthemic, electro-pop self-love hits — marked a shift in the star’s relationship to the public. Gomez would no longer be haunted by her Disney past or her tumultuous relationships. She would be honest about her struggles with the autoimmune disease lupus, self-worth, depression and anxiety. She was taking control, reshaping her image on her terms. 

It’s unsurprising, then, that after the album came a documentary. Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me is a companion piece to Rare, the next step in the star’s search for authentic self-expression. The documentary, which opens this year’s AFI Film Festival on Wednesday, Nov. 2, observes Gomez from an intimate vantage point, watching her negotiate health struggles that shortened her Revival tour in 2016, chronicling her hiatus from public life and grappling with questions about what comes next. 

Unlike other music documentaries (a popular format, as of late, for recalibrating celebrity images), Gomez’s project operates at a rawer, grittier register. It’s textured by the 30-year-old star’s relative youth and her attempts to communicate honestly, instead of perfectly. One’s 20s — a decade that feels defining even though it isn’t — have a discomforting quality to them, like a seat you can’t quite settle into. The pressure to perform stability, ease and assuredness, to leave the too small confines of childhood and embrace the uncertainty of the rest of your life, undoubtedly mounts when you add public scrutiny and the invasive gaze of paparazzi. 

My Mind & Me makes the parameters of Gomez’s life clear from its opening moments. The documentary, directed by Alek Keshishian (1991 Madonna doc Truth or Dare), begins with a brief moment of Gomez on a press run before economizing the story of the pop star’s Revival tour. In both of these montages, Gomez’s exhaustion is felt. She is tired, she says at one point; she doesn’t understand what she’s doing, she says at another. These scenes — anxious, candid, swelling with emotions — signal the kind of documentary experience one should expect: This is a journey of watching the singer unravel before stitching herself back together. 

After making the difficult decision to end her tour, Gomez faces a challenging set of years. For fans of the star, her battle with lupus, her kidney transplant in 2017 and bipolar diagnosis will not be revelatory, but My Mind & Me gives insight into the emotional toll these situations took on Gomez. Keshishian treats his total access to the star as a privilege. He doesn’t shield us from her less flattering moments, but also doesn’t push her beyond her boundaries. The star tells us enough to set the documentary apart from other projects, but there are elisions and missing details that still keep her at a distance. 

We see Gomez breaking down in front of her tour crew as they try to reassure her; we see the young star dragging herself out of bed to face each day of her job; we see her trying to mitigate work-induced anxiety attacks and nerves. We also see her fumbling through the process of self-care — leaning on her managers, her team, her friends.

Yet there are holes that nag after the credits of My Mind & Me, the kind that bring up questions about the purpose of celebrity documentaries that try moving beyond blatant self-mythology. Are they tools for catharsis, journalism-lite enterprises or gifts to fans? How much honesty can one reasonably expect before it all starts to feel invasive? There are times when, because of her established honesty, one wants Gomez to go into more detail. She describes her time at Disney in vaguely haunting terms, but doesn’t specify the experiences that cause her nightmares. She gestures at feeling pigeonholed and constrained by her high-profile relationships, but stops short of elaboration. She doesn’t talk about being an actor. Perhaps our desire to know more is a testament to the spell My Mind & Me casts; you forget that Gomez is not a friend but a stranger. 

The singer is aware of this chasm, and parts of My Mind & Me evoke the tension between Gomez’s simmering resentment and her absolute resignation. Although she’s always surrounded by people, she yearns for more genuine connections. The documentary doesn’t try to garner sympathy, but invites viewers to engage with how fame traps you. When Gomez, who was born in Texas, returns to her hometown, her disposition shifts considerably. She is relaxed in conversations with her cousins, former neighbors and current students at her old middle school. In scenes where Gomez ambles and drives aimlessly through her suburban hometown, the singer escapes into a life that isn’t hers. 

As My Mind & Me moves along, we begin to notice that the bulk of Gomez’s journey requires her to accept her reality and curb her escapism. During a trip to Kenya, when she visits a charity she donated to for women’s education, Gomez and her friend Raquelle Stevens have a straightforward conversation about how the singer can make her real life more habitable — one that she doesn’t have to run from. The honesty, awkwardness and discomfort on display affirm the doc’s attempts to embrace its subject’s three-dimensionality. 

That drive for complexity is also built into My Mind & Me’s visual language, which uses color and black-and-white in a way that mirrors Truth or Dare. Keshishian had access to Gomez’s journal entries, which add a more private-feeling layer to the project. These excerpts show us a different side of the singer, one prone to self-flagellation and aware of her need to treat her health challenges — both mental and physical — as friends instead of adversaries. Gomez’s voiceover reading of her entries accompanies footage of her in a Día de Muertos-esque ensemble.

There are times when all these elements of My Mind & Me create an overstimulating aesthetic clash — we swerve from these heavy diaristic interludes to frenzied tour footage to somber press tour interviews to emotional conversations. It can feel like there’s no time to process just how much is happening to Gomez. And so, by the end, we find ourselves wanting what the singer wants too: a moment to stop, stand still and take a breath.