Ik ben een bastaard

Author and actor Rashif El Kaoui is the child of a Flemish mother, and an alcoholic Moroccan father who wasn’t there to raise him. Now Rashif goes to Morocco to search for his roots. He is scared of what he’ll find out – about his father, his family, and about himself.

Rashif El Kaoui struggles with his bicultural identity. ‘I’m a bastard,’ he says. ‘A half-breed, a garbage can variety.’ When he was still an infant, his father Ahmed left Rashif and his mother to become a weekend dad. When Rashif was 11, he told his father he could stay away on the weekends as well.

After years of feeling separated from his Moroccan roots – except for the constant reminders by the outside world – Rashif now decides to confront his disturbed relationship with his father. Together with Dutch-Turkish photographer Ahmet Polat he travels to Morocco for the first time to meet his extended family. He also travels to France, where Ahmed drowned in the Mediterranean ten years ago. Will he be able to finally make peace with his dad?