Presenting Princess Shaw

Ido Haar, 80 min, Israel.

The true story of the incredible Princess Shaw and the enigmatic composer Kutiman, who discovers her from the other side of the world.

By day, Samantha Montgomery cares for the elderly in one of New Orleans’s toughest neighborhoods. By night, she writes and sings her own songs as Princess Shaw on her confessional YouTube channel. Raw and vulnerable, her voice is a diamond in the rough.

Across the globe, Ophir Kutiel creates video mash ups of amateur YouTube performers. Known as Kutiman, he is a composer, a musician, and a pioneering video artist embraced by the world of fine art. Kutiman “transforms sampling into a multimedia art”, whether at his home on a kibbutz in Israel or at a live performance at the Guggenheim in New York.

Two strangers, almost 7,000 miles apart, begin to build a song. The film unfolds as Kutiman pairs Princess Shaw’s emotional performances in a beautiful expression of generosity and compassion, revealing the bonafide star underneath and her fight to never give up on her dreams.

Presenting Princess Shaw is presented in collaboration with Moving Docs - a EDN initiative supported by Creative Europe, with the aim to create innovative outreach strategies and provide opportunities for urban and rural European audiences to enjoy regular screenings of documentary films through a wide variety of media and platforms.