Back by popular demand, The Bioscope presents 2018 documentary Matangi / Maya / M.I.A which opened in Joburg to sold-out screenings this June as part of the 2018 Encounters Film Festival. 

Matangi / Maya / M.I.A delves into the life of Sri Lankan-born British-Tamil rapper Mathangi Arulpragasam, best known by her stage name M.I.A. Dubbed by Rolling Stone Magazine as “pop’s most fascinating radical” M.I.A’s career and music have been characterised by political consciousness. From her 2005 Pull Up The People whose chorus urged the public to “pull up the people, pull up the poor” and her 2007 Paper Planes which mocked anti-immigrant Western nations and was featured in the smash hit film Slumdog Millionaire to her most recent hit, 2016's Borders which tackled the global refugee crisis, M.I.A has been a trendsetter for activism in the music industry. Speaking about her position as one of the music industry's biggest activists, M.I.A says that “I'm not the person that makes billions of dollars off talking about oppression. I'm the icebreaker and you come in behind me and monetize that”.

Using hours of personal footage recorded over 20 years, Matangi / Maya / M.I.A traces the advent of the Oscar-nominated rapper’s rise to fame, starting from her tumultuous beginnings as the daughter of Tamil Resistance Movement leader Arular Arulpragasam (a separatist political group which even M.I.A. dubbed as terrorists), to her teenage years as a Sri Lankan refugee in London and onwards to international pop stardom.