Soul Boy (2010) poster
2010 · drama · childhood · fantasy

Soul Boy

Directed by Hawa Essuman1h 1m2010
ElsewhereIMDb6.7436TMDB6.812
  • brisk
Movie DNA

Neutral, kinetic, measured drama / childhood, inventive in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Abila (14) lives in one of the most miserable slums in Africa. His girlfriend Shiku belongs to a different tribe, as the result of which he is not really allowed to fraternize with her. And then one drunken night his father gambles away his own soul.

Our read · Soul Boy (2010) reads as a neutral, kinetic, inventive drama · childhood · fantasy entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Soul Boy

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a Kenyan slum boy on a mythic quest to recover his father's stolen soul.

ends upliftingyou’ll be fine aftersteady all the waygrips by minute 8attention 3/5breezes bysubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-updrug use

Skip it tonightSkip if mythic slum fable or a father's drunken gamble feels too whimsical or heavy.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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