Words By Jesse Serwer

Five years back, Shottas was on its way to becoming the new millenium Scarface. Jamaican-American filmmaker Cess Silvera‘s low-budget, Ky-mani Marley-starring 2002 crime film was a favorite among both real and wannabe thugs, and a popular reference point in rap lyrics. The fact that you only could get the bootleg-only flick from the African DVD dude on the Ave, and not at Blockbuster, just added to its appeal. Not to mention that the movie was literally stolen, still unfinished, from Silvera. (Missing-scene placeholders like “Mike Tyson Gets The Shottas Guns” are actually more memorable than the proper scenes). But an attempt to release the proper, finished version of Shottas in 2006 failed (it played in a few New York theaters for one week), to a large degree killing its buzz.