Stay Up

Stay Up follows Malian dancer Mariam Doumbia as she tells her life story through dance, and prepares for her final performance at a dance school in Ouagadougou. For Miriam, fleeing from Mali and migrating to Burkina Faso gave her the possibility to start a new life and heal from the traumas experienced back home, where her family rely on her for their own survival. Now a confident and exuberant young woman on the cusp of motherhood, she is reflecting on the traumas of her own childhood in Mali, where she suffered repeated sexual abuse as a child and a teenager. Through dance Mariam has found the resilience to build a new life.