"All Up There"

17 March 2025

85s

Mind over matter?

As the first daily pill for endometriosis treatment is approved for use on the NHS in England and Wales, Scottish director Bonnie MacRae presents 'All Up Here', a spot for Endometriosis UK about youth, womanhood, and medical misogyny. When the protagonist goes to her male GP for answers, all she gets are stabs in the dark that would drive any patient to despair.

A spiritual successor to 'Answer Machine', which featured at the 2021 Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, 'All Up There' flits the woman’s wretched appointment and her efforts not to let fatigue, pelvic pain, diarrhoea, spasms, and more ruin what should be some of the best years of her life. Yet she can only keep it up for so long until this nebulous condition becomes too much.

MacRae shows how delays in diagnosis—on average, it takes eight years and ten months—quickly makes life close to unbearable. This is reflected in DJ and composer Kerr Darling's soundtrack, which turns the sound of a night out in to something stressful and isolating. You can tell MacRae cares about the subject matter, and is willing to use all the tools at her disposal to make others care too.

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