07/07/2023 - Shamira Raphaëla’s portrait of an energetic and resourceful 14-year-old in Rotterdam’s De Peperklip estate is a burst of joy and an ode to summer and community

Being 14 years old isn’t easy, and the eponymous protagonist of Shamira Raphaëla’s Shabu [+see also:
trailer
interview: Shamira Raphaëla
film profile], released in the U.K. today by T A P E, knows it well. At the start of the film, he is being scolded by his entire family for crashing the car of his grandmother, who is joining the chorus of disapproval via Skype from Suriname. Shabu will have to spend the summer finding ways to raise the €1,200 necessary to fix the car. 

With Shabu our point of focus for the entire film, Raphaëla lets us share in his perspective, and even viewers well into adulthood will be able to feel the profound cruelty of this punishment. But another key aspect of being 14 is having fun, and Shabu is an expert at it. The film’s gorgeously colourful cinematography communicates some of the young man’s irrepressible joie de vivre, contagious to us the audience and to the people around him. Shabu is a people person and during his early attempt to raise money by selling popsicles, he comes across more as a neighbourhood mascot than as a businessman — in fact, his real passion is music, and he tells everyone around him that he will one day be a huge star. It’s a wild assertion to make, but by the end of the film, it seems merely logical to believe him. 

Unfolding in a delightfully free-flowing format that echoes the shapelessness of hot summer days, the film does in fact have a structure, if a pleasantly simple one. Shabu’s hopes and moods rise, fall, then rise again, in an endearing reflection of the big mood swings of childhood, where relatively small hurdles can seem earth-shattering and a text from a girl can turn your entire life around. Shabu spends much of his time with his best friend Jahnoa, walking around the neighbourhood but also supporting one another in endearing scenes of heart-to-heart conversations. In one scene, the two friends check out an elevator where a potentially fatal shooting took place. The blood covering its floor is still fresh, and Shabu and Jahnoa are shocked. It’s a reference to the occasional violence of the neighbourhood but as seen from child-level, incongruous to the experience Shabu usually has of the place. The two charming kids, who talk so candidly about how sick seeing this has made them, seem worlds away from whatever might have happened there.

In fact, Shabu struggles to keep his head out of the clouds. Every boring summer job he takes — selling popsicles, working in a supermarket — fails to hold his interest, and it isn’t long before he begins banging on any and all nearby surfaces with his hands, bopping along to the beat. The young man spends much time in his grandma’s house on the computer, working on his music, playing with sounds and recording himself. A kindly relative is his music coach, but also a more general kind of mentor, full of wisdom that Shabu takes very seriously. He is instrumental in giving the teenager his greatest idea: to raise money, Shabu will organise a huge neighbourhood party, with people paying for entry. 

Business-mode Shabu is a joy to behold, acting like an adult on the phone to ask for favours for the party. In line with this kind of play-acting, however, Shabu also adopts a rather conservative view of the relationships between men and women, treating his “wifey” Stephany in often contradictory ways. It is rather sweet to watch the two lovers try to adopt such adult behaviour, clearly reproducing dynamics seen elsewhere, but when Shabu claims he has to choose between his “career” and his girlfriend, the moment is just sad. Though there’s hoping that here, too, he will get distracted and forget what he said... 

Shabu was produced by Tangerine Tree (the Netherlands) and Diplodokus (Belgium).