If the opening night showcase film at this year’s SXSW film festival set out to prove anything, it’s that sharing our struggles with strangers can be a cathartic and positively-affirming experience. When you’re former Disney star/recovering addict/and newly “out” artist Demi Lovato, it can also be quite vulnerable and scary.

Drawing comparisons to the recent New York Times-produced documentary Framing Britney, which revealed a troubling, unacknowledged history of one of the world’s most famous pop stars (Britney Spears), Demi Lovato’s own story–Dancing with the Devil–sounds hauntingly similar.

Demi’s catapult to stardom first launched as a child in Barney & Friends, then Disney Channel, and quickly led to deep-rooted insecurities, teenage rebellion, and addictions of many kinds. Demi candidly talks about her eating disorders, losing her virginity as a teenager in a sexual assault, and her tumultuous relationship with drugs and alcohol; it’s the last topic that is covered most in-depth, and serves as the genesis behind making this film.

Dancing with the Devil shows that this wasn’t Demi’s first attempt at shooting a documentary to show her struggles. In fact, the initial shoot shut down in 2018 after Demi suffered a near-fatal overdose in which, as she reveals now in the doc, she was mere minutes away from dying. Removing herself from the public eye for a few years to recharge and reset (as well as rest her voice), Demi attributes 2020’s forced quarantine with her family and ex-fiancé to keeping her alive. For many, 2020 was a brutal year; but as her family and close friends share in the film, it was the best thing that could have happened to Demi.

Directed by Michael D. Ratner, Dancing with the Devil joins the ranks of other docs made by former young pop culture icons who want to tell (and own) their stories, including Justin Bieber: Seasons and This is Paris. While Dancing with the Devil is itself, an engaging work, it feels as though its purpose is a thinly veiled beg for forgiveness from her peers and fans. I don’t feel like it’s my place to judge someone’s past and their explanation as to why they did certain things, but the audience’s only requirement here is to sit and listen. Demi’s hope is that we allow her the chance for a fresh start, and this is her explanation as to why she deserves one.

So, the big question: is the struggle over for Demi Lovato? The film doesn’t leave us with a confident answer either way, but one thing it hammers home is that the Demi who is going to reemerge in 2021 is not the same woman we’ve seen before. This new woman has the power to come out on top, and we should all be rooting for her much-deserved comeback.

‘Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil’ is available to stream on YouTube on Tuesday, March 23, 2021.