SINGAPORE — Meet Ai Weiwei: Twitter royalty, selfie addict and… Cat lover.

Yes, one of the first things you’ll find out about one of the world’s most famous and controversial artists is that he’s got a lot of cats (and dogs) at home. One, in particular, has an uncanny talent for opening doors.

The difference between humans and this particular cat, he explains right at the start, is that his cat opens doors but never closes them.

It’s obvious why documentary film-maker Alison Klayman kicks off her eye-opening portrait of Ai with this unusual anecdote — the portly, bearded Ai is savvy and naughty enough to metaphorically open doors and leave them open.

Klayman trains her camera on the Chinese contemporary artist as he prepares for a couple of big shows, including a solo exhibition at the Tate Modern, and follows through until his high-profile disappearance in 2011. Throughout the film, international and Chinese curators, his family and peers in the Chinese art scene beef up our knowledge of the man — his immersion in the New York art scene in the `80s; his poet father who was traumatised by the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

That Ai’s art and activism are closely intertwined isn’t exactly new and is simply underscored in the documentary — his famous seminal works like those photographs of him giving the defiant finger to Tiananmen Square and smashing a Han dynasty urn are seen in this kind of social-commentary context. Most enlightening and touching has been his passion project revolving around the students who died in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008.

Ai is a man on a mission, the scourge of Chinese authorities -- but his firebrand image only tells half the tale. Here’s a man who’s occasionally funny and seemingly very popular in China.

Are you a brand, someone asks him. “Yeah, a brand for liberal thinking,” he responds. Ai may be a superstar artist, but in the docu, he reveals himself to be a shrewd man who uses his celebrity status to great effect. As he provokes authorities, he surrounds himself with cameras and constantly tweets.

Some may think of him as a sell-out, but make no mistake about it, Ai’s world is a dangerous one — the police assault that left him requiring brain surgery and his chilling disappearance are all here. But there’s almost something Zen-like in his demeanour, and he’s also self-aware enough to give that subtle wink (to the ever-present cameras) when he confronts the same authorities who physically abuse him.

When asked if he considers himself an artist, Ai replies that he thinks of himself more as a chess player. And it’s obvious that the game isn’t finished just yet — beyond this movie, his presence is as ubiquitous as ever in the art world and online sphere, throwing us a Gangnam parody and metal rock music videos on YouTube about his incarceration, a show at the Venice Biennale and, closer to home, an ongoing show at Michael Janssen Gallery in Gillman Barracks. The guy’s still got plenty of moves.

(M18, 91mins)