Shabu

Shami­ra Raphaëla orig­i­nal­ly set out to make a film about the aspi­ra­tions of four teenagers liv­ing in Rotterdam’s De Peperk­lip social hous­ing com­plex – a strik­ing archi­tec­tur­al feat with a sprawl­ing cylin­dri­cal sil­hou­ette. When one of these four young­sters called to give her the news that he prob­a­bly couldn’t par­tic­i­pate as he took his grandmother’s car on a joyride and totalled it, Raphaëla saw her film’s tra­jec­to­ry laid out before her.

Shabu opens with the larg­er-than-life teenag­er of the title being remote­ly scold­ed by his grand­moth­er and phys­i­cal­ly nagged on by the rest of his fam­i­ly to come up with the sum of €1,200 to cov­er repair costs. On a quest to redeem him­self before his grand­moth­er returns from her sojourn in Suri­name, he decides to bal­ance big respon­si­bil­i­ties with the even big­ger ambi­tion of mak­ing a name for him­self in the music indus­try. It’s two birds with one stone, then – organ­is­ing a par­ty in De Peperk­lip and charg­ing guests for admission.

The film moves more like a nar­ra­tive fea­ture than a doc­u­men­tary, its play­ful edit­ing and musi­cal embell­ish­ments adding a sheen sel­dom seen out­side of fic­tion film­mak­ing. Some con­trivances make it dif­fi­cult to believe that every­thing we see is borne out of unbri­dled spon­tane­ity, or that there are no strings being pulled behind the cam­era, but there’s no doubt about the can­dour at the heart of the project, and the charm of its cen­tral sub­ject make it infi­nite­ly watchable.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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