Matangi / Maya / M.I.A. (2018) on Netflix
NR20181h 36mBiographyDocumentaryMusic
Maya Arulpragasam, the rapper M.I.A., keeps decades of tapes from her own life. They hold her childhood in Sri Lanka, her move to the United Kingdom and her rise to fame.
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- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.5/102,330 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
The film draws on a cache of personal footage that Maya Arulpragasam, the rapper M.I.A., collected over decades. It follows 22 years of her life, from her childhood in Sri Lanka and her move to the United Kingdom to her career as a recording artist, and it carries her own account of the arguments her music, her public appearances and her politics have caused. Her father, Arul Pragasam, appears in archive material, and the film looks at how his activism ties to the conflict in Sri Lanka. Coverage of her as a controversial pop star left out her origins, and the film returns to them.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Matangi / Maya / M.I.A. (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In July 2013, director Steve Loveridge posted a teaser for the film online, angry over Interscope Records and legal and funding delays. Interscope and Roc Nation had it pulled from YouTube with a copyright claim, and Loveridge quit the project, saying he would "rather die" than keep working on it, before Cinereach's interest brought him back.
- M.I.A. said director Steve Loveridge tossed out the concert footage where she looked good and left roughly four minutes of music in the finished film. She told Billboard she had not known her music would barely feature, calling it hard, "because that is my life."
- In May 2018, M.I.A. said she was blocked from boarding a flight in London to Toronto for the Hot Docs festival after immigration officials identified a stamp in her passport. She flew to the U.S. instead and reached Canada by land from Buffalo, New York, and attended the festival.
