Shabu

The kid at the center of Shamira Raphaëla’s Shabu is one of those boisterous types. People love him. He’s cocky. He fills up the screen. But he’s in trouble very early. He has crashed his grandmother’s car. He’ll have to pay.

Ordinarily, Shabu would be a documentary of interest to kids and the parents that have them. But it is also heavily political because its protagonist is a Black kid in Europe and as everyone knows, that is usually the set-up of anything-but-flattering images.

But this is a film that paints a rather joyful picture. A lot of that is down to the kid who won’t, who just can’t, stay down. The 14-year old is so exuberant, it seems impossible that a story about him could be yet another visual excursion into black poverty pornography. Shabu is living the life of a boy not quite aware of the politics of his existence. But, surely, a part of the reason the documentary doesn’t fall into a clichéd exploration of life as a Black kid in Europe also comes down to the director’s choices. Why this kid? Why film in well-lit areas? Why emphasize the bond shared between the kid’s family members?

Halfway through the film, there is a scene that threatens to upturn most of what has gone past. There’s a gruesome image: blood in an elevator. Shabu and his friend go up to have a look. The camera follows them and lingers a bit too long on the blood-soaked floor. It’s never really clear what has happened, but the scene complicates the film’s breeziness, as if to say that it is not necessarily the case that the documentary’s setting is an admirable place to raise children. Indeed, the neighborhood Peperklip is not one of those places the Netherlands is likely to advertise on global media. But people do live there and have lives not quite colored by whatever violence might erupt.

Away from that scene, which doesn’t quite fit in with the film’s central narrative, our protagonist goes through events that probably have incredibly high stakes, but may prove to be not quite earth-shaking in a few years. Besides his grandmother’s anger over her car, his girlfriend announces something that sounds like a break-up. But she returns later. She’s not quite happy they are drifting apart, in a scene that has Shabu speak as an adult who wishes to leave his childhood behind. He gets woman advice along with some consolation in a pool. Crying over a girl should only happen once, he’s told. “If it happens two or three times, you are stupid.”

It’s funny advice from a kid only a few years older than he is. But it’s delivered (and perhaps assimilated) as though it’s a sermon from the mouth of a spirit-filled pastor, or life-changing philosophy from Kierkegaard. In reality, it’s closer to a throwaway line in a bubbly rap verse.

Shabu himself looks like the late rapper Biggie Smalls, so it feels quite apt when he vibes to a beat made by the American. In a different scene, he works to a song from Burna Boy, the Nigerian popstar. Taken together, those scenes point to a truth that has remained with black societies wherever they might be found: music, as art, as business, can be found in less than ideal situations. Little wonder that as a last resort to raise money to fix his grandmother’s car, Shabu organizes a party. No prize for guessing who the headliner is.