Matangi / Maya / M.I.A.

MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. is not your ordinary portrait of a music star because M.I.A. is not your average pop culture phenomenon. She is a child from Sri Lanka, an immigrant growing up in Great Britain, a music video reformer, an icon, a political voice and activist, the pulsating rhythm of streets at night, an aspiring documentary director, a performer, a refugee, a reader of Frantz Fanon, a mother, an experimental provocatrix, a lover, the daughter of a terrorist. She is “fucking popular”. She embraces and resists. The film shows all of that. We are invited to move our bodies and care. However, this is only half the truth. Matangi is also a vulnerable human being full of doubts, a posh rapper living the high life while identifying with the image of a poor Tamil, a clever and ambitious pioneer of selfmanagement. She is full of contradictions. Out of the 700 hours of footage the artist gave to him, director Steve Loveridge distills an intimate origin story of a woman between the Western pop world and her roots in Sri Lanka. Through his affirmative approach delicate secrets are revealed. Still the film does not take the magic out of M.I.A. but adds more layers to a defining artist of her generation. (Patrick Holzapfel)

In the presence of Steve Loveridge.