A new and revealing documentary made from 700 hours of personal footage has left singer-producer-activist M.I.A. with mixed feelings after it premiered on January 21 at the Sundance Film Festival.
"He took all of my cool out. He took all the shows where I look good and tossed it in the bin. Eventually, if you squash all the music together from the film, it makes for about four minutes. I didn’t know that my music wouldn’t really be a part of this," M.I.A. told Billboard. "I find that to be a little hard, because that is my life. It’s not the film that I would have made."
MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A. was directed by the singer's friend Stephen Loveridge, a London-based artist and filmmaker. It was billed as being culled from "a cache of personal tapes shot by Maya and her closest friends over the last 22 years," and M.I.A.'s reaction to seeing the movie for the first time emphasized just how revealing the film was.
"This film is literally the first time that my family or friends are going to know certain things about me that they never knew," she said.
According to Billboard, the movie is largely centered on her origins as an activist. She comes from a Sri Lankan family with strong political ties, particularly to the Tamil Tigers separatist group. M.I.A. received her U.S. visa in October 2016 after many delays.
"Whenever a celebrity makes a film about themselves, they are never going to have that objective distance from themselves. This was just the right kind of knowledge of her to make it truthful, but I have just enough objectivity to know when to put that shot in there," Loveridge responded to Billboard. "Maybe she won’t like how she looked or if she said the wrong thing, but I need it so an audience can understand to have compassion for the subject."
MATANGI was scored by Dhani Harrison (son of the Beatles' George Harrison) and Paul Hicks. M.I.A.'s 2016 album AIM was reported to be her last, though she released the singles "Goals" and "P.O.W.A." last year. She also performed at ComplexCon 2017.
Read about M.I.A.'s documentary reaction above, learn 10 things you never knew about M.I.A., and check out our list of the best music films on Netflix.
