How does a performer who reached the very top of popular music tell her own story, and on whose terms? Tina, the 2021 feature documentary from directors T.J. Martin and Daniel Lindsay, puts that question to its subject directly. Built around Tina Turner's own account and the recollections of people who worked beside her, the film traces her path from adversity to a mainstream international audience that few African American women artists had reached before her.
What is Tina about?
The documentary approaches Tina Turner's life as a story of survival first and stardom second. Across nearly two hours it follows the long road she travelled to become a global headline act, a road defined by obstacles that would have ended most careers before they began. Rather than a parade of hits, the film is interested in what it cost her to keep going, and in how the public narrative of her life was shaped, retold and eventually reclaimed by the woman at its centre. Archival material sits alongside new interviews, and Turner herself reflects on years she would rather have left behind. It is a portrait of triumph that never pretends the triumph came cheaply.
About the cast
Tina Turner anchors the film in her own words. Around her the directors assemble a set of voices that includes Angela Bassett, Oprah Winfrey, Kurt Loder, Katori Hall, Erwin Bach, Roger Davies and Rhonda Graam, each bringing a different vantage point on the singer's career and personal life. Martin and Lindsay, working as a directing team, let those interviews breathe rather than cutting them into soundbites, which gives the film a reflective, conversational rhythm.
Context & significance
A joint United Kingdom and United States production, Tina arrived in 2021 as a late-career summing-up for a Grammy-winning artist whose public image had already been the subject of books, stage work and film. That earlier retelling is itself part of the documentary's subject: the picture keeps returning to the question of who gets to narrate a famous life, and what it means for the person living it to keep being asked about her most painful chapters. The film was warmly received on release and remains one of the more strongly reviewed music biographies in the K-Time catalogue. It runs one hundred and eighteen minutes and folds biography, documentary and music into a single, steadily paced narrative.
Watching Tina on Ktime
Tina is available to stream on K-Time; a free account login is all that is needed to start watching. The film is presented in its original English-language version, and no Persian dub or subtitle track is currently listed for it, so it suits viewers comfortable following English-language interviews. Browsing and playback take place inside K-Time's Farsi interface, which makes the title easy to locate alongside the platform's other documentaries.