W. Kamau Bell’s latest documentary, “1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed,” examines the experience of growing up mixed race in this third decade of the 21st century.

That’s a big topic, but theOakland comedian, TV host (“Totally Biased”) and documentarian (“We Need to Talk About Cosby,” “United Shades of America”), known for exploring some of the world’s toughest issues, does two things to narrow his movie’s focus: He limits his scope to the Bay Area, and he concentrates mainly on children.

The local focus means that some of the observations the documentary makes won’t necessarily apply once you get east of Solano or south of Santa Clara. Our region, alas, isn’t the rest of the country. Still, there’s something about the relaxed quality of the movie’s approach — the sense of an East Bay filmmaker exploring the people around him and within his community — that imparts an appealingly relaxed quality to the film itself.

Bell’s intent may be serious, but he’s not trying to give the last word on the subject or even the first word. Rather, he’s trying to convey the flavor of people’s lives in a specific place and time. To do so, he mostly gets out of the way and lets the kids speak for themselves.

Keeping the focus on children turns out to have been an inspired idea. Bell, who is Black, has three daughters with his wife, Melissa Hudson Bell, who is white, and so he starts “1000% Me” with his own family. He interviews his eldest daughter, Sami, a 10-year-old with the poise of a 30-year-old, and then talks to his 7-year-old, Juno.

Juno is a real charmer. In one scene, she recounts an incident in school in which some of her classmates told her that she was white. On camera, Juno says that she was upset by this, because she’s whiteandBlack.

This is a point emphasized throughout this 60-minute film by various participants. Being mixed race does not mean beingsplitraced. It does not mean being half of one thing and half of another. Rather, it means being fully both. As the 11-year-old Myles puts it, “I’m 100% Filipino, I’m 100% African American, and 1,000% a person.”

Bell also interviews the parents and a few of these kids’ adult siblings, and on several occasions, the adults speak of growing up in a harsher world than that of the younger generation. Indeed, just a decade ago, there were fewer mixed-race children, and more of a feeling of not belonging to any particular group.

Kaylin, a soft-spoken 16-year-old who is half Black, one quarter Korean and one quarter white, talks about not fitting in with the Black group. “I felt excluded by my own race,” she says.

Overall, there’s a sense in “1000% Me” that it’s depicting a fast-moving situation and just offering a snapshot of events hurrying by. Still, the impression it leaves is that life for mixed-race children has gotten dramatically better in recent years.

In that way, “1000% Me” is optimistic. But it’s optimistic in another way, as well — one that has little to do with race. It shows us that the kids today are more than all right; they’re brilliant. Throughout the movie, grammar-school children are shown making subtle points and expressing sophisticated ideas.

Is this a Bay Area thing, or a California thing? Or is this the product of a filmmaker’s selection process?

Let’s hope it’s global, because if such intelligence and insight is characteristic of the rising generation, “1000% Me” should give us hope for the future.

Reach Mick LaSalle: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com