Article by Jeremy de Leur
Who would have thought that the celebration of mindless drinking and making regrettable choices at a pub-crawl, could have served as the inspiration for my first documentary? In the last bar on this drunken Thursday night, I found myself sincerely talking to a guy who was of Dutch and Moroccan descent, and being truly surprised about what he had to say. What he explained to me about his cultural identity showed such a distortion in what would be hoped for in the ideal multi-cultural society, that I was truly intrigued. He wanted to be perceived as the ‘good’ Moroccan through his Western values and hobbies. Wait, what? Has our society made you believe that Moroccans are inherently not good? Are you supposed to behave as Western as possible to be considered good? Is your individual-self so affected by what the society believes that you can’t just be you? It triggered so many questions, and it identified so many problems that I immediately wanted to know more about this topic.
Since a year I have been involved with Every day is Friday, now a platform for culture in Rotterdam and The Hague, but originally a series of short movies. With Carlos Eperon on the director’s seat, we gathered a number of short stories and transformed them to film. For me, this was the first time that I was involved in filmmaking, and I really enjoyed it. I really love film as an artform, and I specifically appreciate documentary making. And so, making my own documentary was something I really hoped to do! Finding a topic is sometimes a futile undertaking. Luckily, in my case, the topic found me. ”Can I See Your ID, Please?” is the result.
