Plot
In 1928, a young man from Suriname named Waldemar Nods goes to the Netherlands to study. His dark skin stands out and he faces discrimination. He moves to lodgings in The Hague with Rika van der Lans, who went to live separated from her deeply religious husband Willem, after she discovered him cheating 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 start a relationship and she becomes pregnant. She says nothing to Waldemar and goes to a woman for a clandestine abortion, but changes her mind. When she is four months pregnant she tells Waldemar. He is angry for not having been told earlier, and 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 will accept the baby as his own child. He changes his mind when he learns the father is dark skinned. He also obtains a court order for Bertha and Henk to also live with him. He refuses a divorce, preventing Rika from marrying Waldemar.
When the child is born, they call the boy Waldy, nicknamed Sonny Boy. Rika’s landlord terminates the rental, because of Rika's extramarital affair, especially with a dark-skinned Surinamese. Rika and Waldemar roam the streets with Waldy, when they meet an older Jewish man, Sam, who rents them a room.
With financial support from Sam, Rika and Waldemar start a guesthouse in Scheveningen. When the Netherlands is invaded by the Germans, Rika and Waldemar are forced to give shelter to German soldiers. Later on they have to evacuate the guesthouse, as the area is cleared for the Atlantikwall defense system.
Because Rika is mother of five children, she is allotted a big replacement house. At the request of a young resistance fighter, Kees Chardon, whom she met through the help of a clergyman, Rika starts hiding people in her house. As the fee for Jews is higher than for Dutch, she chooses to hide Jewish people. After some time, a SS deserter hides in the guesthouse as well. At first Waldy is not aware about the individuals hiding there, but after witnessing Sam’s deportation and a street fight, Rika is visited by a collaborating official. Waldy hears something upstairs and discovers the hiding individuals. After a raid, the hidden are discovered and arrested, together with Waldemar, Rika and Waldy. Waldy is released and goes to live with relatives and eventually to a foster family. This is not safe, because the Germans want to put more pressure on Waldemar and Rika during interrogations. Waldy is therefore placed with a farmer. When people come to the farm during the winter hunger, Waldy prevents a couple selling their wedding rings for food, by offering his parents’ rings. The farmer refuses Waldy’s rings and explains everybody tries to make some money during wartime, also Rika and Waldemar were paid for the hiding.
Waldemar is shipped to Neuengamme, but through his language skills, he is drafted for the mailroom. This gives him an opportunity to send letters to Waldy clandestinely. After Hitler's death, Waldemar is deported to the ship Cap Arcona, which was bombed by British fighters. He jumps into the sea and manages to swim to the shore. On arrival on the beach, he is killed by two German child soldiers. Sometime later, Marcel and Bertha arrive at a train station where they meet up with Waldy and take him to live with his maternal grandparents. He is given a letter written by his mother who wished her children and parents luck, with hopes of visiting her husband.
In the end credits, it is revealed Rika had died that year in KZ Ravensbrück after an epidemic of dysentery. Also, Waldy never knew the truth about his parents' deaths until sixty years later in 2004.
