Selena Gomez Attends AFI Festival 2022 With New Documentary ‘My Mind & Me’

Selena Gomez steps out in a gorgeous jewel toned dress for the premiere of her new documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind And Me, during 2022 AFI Fest at TCL Chinese Theatre on Wednesday (November 2) in Hollywood.

The 30-year-old Only Murders In The Building actress met up with director Alek Keshishian on the red carpet ahead of the screening.

In a new interview, both Selena and Alek opened up about their favorite scenes in the documentary and more music saying “It’s hard to keep doing music when people don’t necessarily take you seriously.

“I’ve had moments where I’ve been like, ‘What’s the point? Why do I keep doing this?’ ‘Lose You to Love Me’ I felt was the best song I’ve ever released, and for some people it still wasn’t enough. I think there are a lot of people who enjoy my music, and for that I’m so thankful, for that I keep going, but I think the next time I do an album it’ll be different. I want to give it one last try before I maybe retire music.”

Selena Gomez is in the midst of a frenetic, painfully banal press tour. Traveling through Paris in an SUV, she’s visibly exhausted, wrung out and drawn, laying her head on her friend Raquelle’s lap. “How are you feeling?” asks Raquelle, looking concerned. “I’m very tired,” replies Gomez. Gently, Raquelle asks, “Do you want to do your morning meds? I know the answer, but you should.” Gomez goes silent in the car, but we hear her shortly thereafter in voice-over, reading from her diary: “Let me make a promise. I’ll only tell you my darkest secrets.”

The scene takes place early on in Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, an Apple+ documentary (premiering November 4) that is profoundly sad and surprisingly raw for a star of Gomez’s standing.

“I was going to release this documentary multiple times and it never really felt right,” the star said on the red carpet at the event. “Then the pandemic hit and a lot of people started having conversations around mental health, the isolation, people feeling depressed or anxious — never feeling those feelings before but have now. I just hope that this will carry on to something like a conversation that people will use to help later on.”

‘I Couldn’t Believe the Things I Was Aspiring to Be’

The theme of connection and starting a conversation rang true throughout the film, as Gomez sought healing from her bipolar disorder and lupus diagnoses as well as her 2017 kidney transplant through spending time with others — whether that be her best friend Raquelle Stevens, her childhood neighbors in Grand Prairie, Texas, or the children of Kenya during a 2019 philanthropic visit.

The Alek Keshishian-helmed film is a raw look at mental health, pulling back the curtain of fame to reveal a young woman who is actively working on her complicated relationship with loving and accepting herself. It’s rare to see a high-profile star show the more uncomfortable versions of herself to a global audience, allowing a camera crew to film her as she cries over her insecurities, undergoes a medical IV therapy for lupus and speaks at length about what it’s like to have a psychological disorder.

At one point in the documentary, Gomez likens learning about her bipolar disorder to reading about thunder and lightning as a child to help subside her fear of storms — which is a lesson she told Billboard she still uses to this day. “Knowledge eliminates fear in my opinion, because then you start having a relationship with your mental health, so I would suggest to learn as much as you can,” she shared as her advice to those going through similar struggles that she has gone through.

At an onstage Q&A following the premiere, Gomez elaborated on that same thought. “It’s OK to feel not good enough and to feel like you’re complicated and complex. It’s just about having a healthy relationship with how you talk to yourself, how you seek help, how you talk to other people,” she said of what she hopes people will take from the film. “I hope this starts a chain reaction of people saying, ‘Hey, I want to say something about my mental health. I want to talk about it and seek help.’ That’s one of the bravest things someone can do. Even if just one person is impacted by this film, I would consider myself the luckiest girl.”

Filmed in stops and starts over the course of six years by Truth or Dare director Alek Keshishian, who is Gomez’s manager’s brother and who filmed the 2015 music video for Gomez’s “Hands to Myself,” it covers a wide swath of chronological and thematic ground.

The doc begins with Gomez rehearsing for and then slowly breaking down during her 2016 Revival tour, which she cancels partway through due to a fledgling mental-health crisis.

Keshishian picks back up with her a few years later, after a long hiatus from performing that included a stint in a mental-health facility, a lupus flare-up that triggered the need for a kidney transplant, and a bipolar-disorder diagnosis.

We watch Gomez grapple with the decision to share her diagnosis and the subsequent stage fright and anxiety as she makes her return to the stage; we travel with her to Kenya, where she comes palpably alive while volunteering with a local school; we follow her through that aforementioned London and Paris press tour, where she’s plopped in front of cameras and given excruciating prompts to provoke quirky sound bites. (In one bizarre interaction, a journalist says to Gomez, “One DJ, one word: Marshmello.” Gomez’s incredulous response: “Fluffy?”)

Afterwards, near tears and viscerally reminded of the depersonalization she once felt as a young Disney star, she asks her team, “What am I even doing right now?”

Here’s the official summary: After years in the limelight, Selena achieves unimaginable stardom. But just as she reaches a new peak, an unexpected turn pulls her into darkness. This uniquely raw and intimate documentary spans her six-year journey into a new light.

The film will be out on November 4 on Apple TV+.

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Adam Regan

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