'Chop Shop' is the story of Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco), a twelve-year-old Latino street orphan in the "Iron Triangle," a vibrant, sprawling, industrial neighborhood teeming with auto-body repair shops, scrap yards, and garbage dumps on the outskirts of Queens, New York. Alejandro, like many young boys in the area, works at one of the many auto body repair shops that line the street. Although conditions are harsh, his life is sprinkled with moments of happiness as he carves out a life for himself in an urban wasteland. The brightest of these moments is the arrival of his sister Isamar (Isamar Gonzales), who moves in with him in the tiny room that he has found for them perched in the back of the shop. With a mixture of childlike naiveté and adult ambition, Alejandro begins obsessively saving his money to buy a mobile-food van as the two dream about owning and running a small business of their own. But when their dream, and their loving relationship, is threatened by the hard truths of life, work, and one another, the children find themselves forced to make the kinds of difficult decisions that most adults never have to face.It's coming to the Starz FilmCenter and I'm gonna be first in line to see it. It looks awesome because it reminds me of a game I would play with my sisters when we were very little called Poor Kids and had pretty much exactly the same plot. Man, playing Poor Kids was like riding an emotional roller coaster but we loved it.
