This documentary is a tribute to South African singer Miriam Makeba (1932—2008), who launched in the dance halls of Cape Town and spent half a century fighting racism and poverty to promote justice and peace.

Mika Kaurismäki’s documentary is a tribute to South African singer Miriam Makeba (1932—2008), who launched her career in the dance halls of Cape Town and spent half a century fighting racism and poverty to promote justice and peace worldwide. When she was forced into exile in 1959, Harry Belafonte helped her to gain entry to the United States, where in 1962 she appeared at John F. Kennedy’s birthday party, among other venues, and scored her first international hit with “Pata Pata.” Following her 1968 marriage to Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael, and resulting FBI surveillance, she settled in Guinea, where she continued to fight the white apartheid regime in her native land.