Hailed at the Toronto International Film Festival as “astounding and thoroughly inspirational” (Variety) and “an old fashioned fairy tale come true” (The Hollywood Reporter), Presenting Princes Shaw follows the aspiring New Orleans singer Princess Shaw as she posts her songs on YouTube and waits to be discovered.

Listening thousands of miles away on an Israeli kibbutz is the composer Kutiman, famous on the internet for launching viral videos, but unknown to Princess. Kutiman practices a unique form of musical arrangement, sampling fragments from amateur YouTube postings—a little girl’s piano recital, a cellist playing Bach, an electric guitar solo—and assembling them into original collage works in a project entitled “Thru You.”

Cognizant of Kutiman’s interest, Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar set out to follow Princess to see what would happen. Princess possesses a tremendous gift as a vocalist and an indomitable sprit, despite having faced a lot of adversity in her life. What unfolds on screen in Presenting Princess Shaw is an act of movie magic—and a testament to the combined power of hard work, talent and dreams. – Thom Powers

This film is also part of the Knight Documentary Achievement Award series