Prince of Broadway

Lucky is a Ghanaian immigrant who stands on Canal Street in New York steering people into a shop that sells counterfeit brands. One day a woman he used to see turns up with a child, tells him he is the father and leaves. Lucky does not believe the boy is his, but there is nobody else to take him. The subject is not fatherhood but how narrow the space is in which undocumented people live. Lucky cannot go to a hospital, cannot go to the police, does not know how a test is done. The child is not a problem but an impossibility. The form is close to documentary. The film was shot in real shops, on the real street and largely improvised; the camera is inside the crowd and most of the people around are not actors. The sound does not clean up the street either. It belongs to Sean Baker's early work, and the method he would become known for is already set here: a small crew, non-professional performers and real locations. Prince Adu, who plays the lead, was not a professional actor. Karren Karagulian is a long-standing collaborator who appears in nearly all of the director's films. Who it is for: viewers who like American independent cinema and immigrant stories. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a clean image and an orderly narrative; the film is raw on purpose.