ADJOINING Shea Stadium in Willets Point, Queens, is a mile of teeming, Third Worldish streets devoted to automotive businesses – some legitimate, some not quite so legal, as the title “Chop Shop” indicates.
Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani, who offered a verite-style look at the subculture of coffee vendors in “Man Push Cart,” focuses his latest film on a 12-year-old boy and his 16-year-old sister (played without artifice by Alejandro Polanco and Isamar Gonzalez) who live in a crudely improvised space above an auto-body shop.
The siblings dream of operating their own food van and struggle to raise the necessary money in ways that sometimes flout the law (sis turns tricks with truckers). Bahrani’s unsentimental film is perhaps most interesting as a look at a colorful, little-known world that has recently been targeted for urban renewal.
CHOP SHOP
Running time: 85 minutes. Not rated (discreet portrayal of sexual activity). The Film Forum, at Houston and Varick streets.