It sucks being a 12-year-old in the city. Especially when you're trying to make a living buffing cars in the same seedy Queen's chop shop where you share a tiny back room bed with your 16-year-old sister. But Ramin Bahrani's sophomore film "Chop Shop" isn't out to make you feel sorry for Alejandro, the ambitious street orphan at the heart of this realistic indie; rather, he's just sick of seeing the same bourgeois characters time and again on the big screen.

"Hollywood films and even American independent films seem to focus almost entirely on upper class, attractive white people and their problems. But there is more to the world and certainly much more in a city as diverse as New York. I am interested in the other group of people, the people you don't see featured so much in films, and that's why I focus on them," Bahrani told Gen Art.

In a refreshing change of pace, there are no moral judgments made in this film; whether Alejandro is swiping hubcaps at Shea Stadium to make extra cash or telling his sister, Isamar, that it's OK to prostitute herself, Bahrani asks us to simply observe this hidden part of society through the unblinking lens of his hand-held camera. For his Iron Triangle district characters, it's all about survival—by any means—in an impoverished part of the city. But there's a glimmer of hope to be found in the fact that their plight doesn't seem quite as invisible anymore.

"Chop Shop" plays Outdoor Cinema 2008 at Socrates Sculpture Park on July 23rd; admission is free and there will be an introduction by Bahrani.

- Caroline Stanley

Similar Topics:film, indie, mumblecore

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