Presenting Princess Shaw

All around the world, at any given moment, random people post personal video clips online. They are their virtual messages in a bottle, tossed into the boundless sea that is the Internet. Most of these posts flounder in a sad limbo of indifference and anonymity – unless your YouTube handle happens to be Princess Shaw. Samantha Montgomery, 38, lives on her own in one of New Orleans’ toughest neighborhoods. By day she works as a caregiver for the elderly; at night she transforms into Princess Shaw, belting out soulful originals at sparsely attended open mic nights and posting homemade a cappella clips on YouTube to a handful of followers. One of them is Kutiman, a.k.a. Ophir Kutiel, an Israeli musician living on a kibbutz outside Tel Aviv, who mixes together one of Montgomery’s clips with instrumentals posted online by random musicians, resulting in a surprising reversal of fortune for the unforgettable Princess Shaw. A rousing documentary crowd-pleaser about a star-crossed singer-songwriter and her crafty secret admirer, Presenting Princess Shaw examines loneliness, anonymity and connectivity in the Internet age, where showbiz dreams remain but a mouse-click away for even the most hardscrabble striver.