‘Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.’ Trailer: She Flies Like Paper, Gets High Like Planes in Acclaimed Sundance Documentary — Watch

M.I.A. has more records than the KGB. She also has a documentary about her life courtesy of director Steve Loveridge, whose account of her life and career premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Born Maya Arulpragasam, the musician and activist best known for songs like “Paper Planes” and “Bad Girls” has courted acclaim and controversy in nearly equal measure over the last 10 years. Watch the trailer for “Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.” below.

It opens with the ever-catchy hook from “Paper Planes” before showing glimpses of M.I.A.’s earlier, more troubled days as a refugee from the Sri Lankan Civil War. “There’s a genocide going on,” she says at one point in the trailer. “We don’t want to talk about death; we talk about Beverly Hills…You’ve got access to a microphone. Please use it to say something.”

After premiering at Sundance, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award, the film went on to screen at New Directors/New Films, Hotdocs, and Berlinale, among others. Cinereach and Abramorama will release “Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.” on September 28.