Samantha Montgomery, who is known to the world as Princess Shaw, is a woman living in New Orleans and who has been singing for years. She’s been trying to make it for a long time, going to talent shows, makes YouTube videos and dreams about performing for a huge audience and being famous. The reality is different though. She works in an elderly home, during the shows she does the number of people listening can almost fit in a car and personally she isn’t doing well either. She sometimes doesn’t make enough money in order to pay electricity, the wheels of her car are stolen and her 8-year relationship with her girlfriend ends. And still, despite all of that she keeps making music. Documentary maker Ido Haar follows her and has told her that he wants to film her because he wants to make a special about YouTubers. The real reason is different though.
The real reason is that Ido Haar is working together with Ophir Kutiel from Israel, who is known on YouTube as Kutiman. What he does is make music. He gets his samples from Youtube films (not from records) and his mixes get lots of views. Once he discovered the channel Pricess Shaw is running he decided to make a song using one of her a capella videos. She doesn’t know this though and only finds out after Kutiman has uploaded it to YouTube. You witness what this does to Samantha when she realizes what is happening and what this could mean for her.
You could say that the way Samatha was approached by Haar wasn’t completely fair as he wasn’t showing his cards, but it does make this an effective story. Samantha has gone through so many horrible things (as a child she was abused a lot), she’s struggling in her day-to-day life and when things starts happening the emotional impact on her (and the viewer) is enormous. All thanks to Kutiman. Doors literally open up for her and she’s able to do things she never thought possible. It gives this story such a huge twist that it becomes a feelgood documentary. Princess Shaw’s story is still developing, so the ending might disappoint a bit, but this movie really managed to overwhelm me in a good way.
