The incredible life story of an internationally renowned artist who goes to the frontline to tell the real story of the world.

Brian Maguire has been catapulted to the forefront of the international art world in recent years as it has been realised how much his challenging work contributes to and tells the real story of the world. This is the incredible life story of an internationally renowned artist who has lived life right on the edge and saved many lives along the way. He tells the stories of those that have lost the race, the victims of poverty, drugs and violence.

All of the elements of Brian’s extraordinary life are rolled out in his artworks, experiences that have fuelled his drive to bring attention to stories of injustice, stories that uncover the worlds of those that are not fortunate enough to be part of the capitalist bubble, stories which might not otherwise be told. We bring these artworks, and their global themes of struggle and neglect at the hands of capitalism to life in this film.

Over the last decade we have travelled to many of the locations that have become the subjects of his work and to exhibitions and talks at UN Headquarters in New York and The European Parliament. A part of the present story began over a decade ago in Ciudad Juarez Mexico with the families of femicide victims and it ends across the border in the Arizona desert at the sites of the deaths of migrants who have crossed the wall to seek a better life in the US but have died from dehydration on the last leg of their journey to freedom.

Brian has dedicated his life to travelling around the world to work with people who in his own words are the victims of the failings of capitalism. This includes working in prisons in many countries.

Brian travels to the frontline to immerse himself in the subject. He needs to touch and feel the story to make real sense of it and bring it to life in his artworks . He processes these experiences in his studios in Dublin and Paris. In this documentary Brian revisits the mothers of the femicide victims of Ciudad Juarez Mexico and the notorious prison there to give art workshops. He spends time on the US Mexican border giving workshops to migrants fleeing drug violence and finding the locations in the Arizona desert where undocumented migrants have died from dehydration and starvation having reached the US. The documentary also includes major exhibitions at UN Headquarters in New York, on both sides of the US/Mexican border and at the Crawford Art Gallery and Irish Museum of Modern Art back home, Close friends such as Proinsias De Rossa, Christy Moore, Eamon Gilmore, Eddie Cahill (brother of The General) and Barbara Dawson (director of Hugh Lane Gallery) give a deeper insight into his personality."

Brian is the living embodiment of his own work. He still works in situations that are both challenging, often dangerous and in areas of the world that are considered to be on the edge, or at the frontline of life and death. Now in his mid-seventies, Brian is more determined than ever to use his newly found and increasing status on the international stage of the art world, to give a voice to those who don’t have a voice.

The Life of Brian (Maguire) was directed by Mark Mc Loughlin for Bang Bang Teo and supported by RTE, Hugh Lane Gallery and Creative Ireland.