Sonny Boy

• In 1928, Waldemar Nods, a young man from Suriname, travels to the Netherlands to study, where his dark skin immediately marks him as an outsider and he faces everyday discrimination as he tries to belong in a new country. He moves to lodgings in The Hague with Rika van der Lans, who has separated from her deeply religious husband Willem after discovering his affair with the maid Jans. She has taken all four of their children (Wim, Jan, Bertha and Henk) with her.

• Waldemar and the seventeen years his senior, Rika, begin a relationship and she becomes pregnant. She keeps quiet about the pregnancy at first and even considers abortion with a clandestine clinic, but changes her mind. When she is four months along, she finally tells Waldemar. He is angry for not being told sooner, and he leaves. Wim and Jan run away to their father Willem. Waldemar returns, and when Willem visits Rika to tell her about a job opening in Indonesia, he asks her to come along. He initially agrees to accept the baby as his own child but relents only to discover the father is dark-skinned. He also obtains a court order for Bertha and Henk to live with him and refuses a divorce, blocking Rika from marrying Waldemar.

• When the child is born, they name him Waldy, nicknamed Sonny Boy. Rika’s landlord evicts them because of the affair with a dark-skinned Surinamese. Rika and Waldemar roam the streets with Waldy until they meet an older Jewish man, Sam, who rents them a room. With Sam’s financial support, Rika and Waldemar start a guesthouse in Scheveningen.

• As Germany invades the Netherlands, Rika and Waldemar are forced to shelter German soldiers. Later they must evacuate the guesthouse as the Atlantikwall defenses are built. Because Rika is mother to five children, she is granted a large replacement house. At the invitation of a young resistance fighter, Kees Chardon, whom she meets with help from a clergyman, Rika begins hiding people in her house. Because the fee for hiding Jews is higher than for Dutch citizens, she chooses to shelter Jewish people, while a SS deserter also hides in the guesthouse.

• Waldy initially remains unaware of the hidden people, but after witnessing Sam’s deportation and a street fight, a collaborating official visits. Waldy hears noises upstairs and discovers the hidden residents. Following a raid, the hidden people are arrested along with Waldemar, Rika and Waldy. Waldy is eventually released and placed with relatives, then a foster family, while Waldemar and Rika face continued danger from German authorities.

• The danger intensifies, and Waldy is placed with a farmer to stay safe. During the winter hunger, Waldy offers his parents’ rings to prevent a couple from selling their rings for food. The farmer refuses, explaining that wartime acts of desperation affect everyone, including Rika and Waldemar, who were paid for the hiding.

• Waldemar is shipped to Neuengamme, but his language skills land him a role in the mailroom, giving him a lifeline to send letters to Waldy secretly. After Hitler’s death, Waldemar is deported to theCap Arcona, a ship bombed by British forces. He jumps into the sea, reaches the shore, and is killed by two German child soldiers on the beach. Later, Marcel and Bertha arrive at a train station to meet Waldy and take him to live with his maternal grandparents, where he receives a letter from his mother offering luck and hopes of visiting her husband.

• In the end credits, it’s revealed that Rika died in Ravensbrück that year after a dysentery outbreak. Waldy learns the full truth about his parents’ deaths only sixty years later, in 2004.

Last Updated: November 22, 2025 at 15:59