Morocco and UK / 2014 / 83mins / Documentary / Arabic and French

At 14, Rabha El Haimer was a child bride, beaten, raped and then rejected. Ten years later, she is a single mother, because her marriage was never registered. Deborah Perkin is the first person to film in Morocco's family courts (whose justice system is the most radical in Muslim states to protect women and children rights) following an illiterate woman’s extraordinary legal fight to prove her marriage so her daughter is no longer a "bastard".

Deborah Perkin

Deborah Perkin is an experienced and award-winning documentary filmmaker who has worked as director, series producer, executive producer, and development head in television, radio and online. She embraces the quick, the dead and the quirky, from criminal psychology on BBC1 in My Son the Killer, to archaeology on BBC2 in China’s Terracotta Army to music on BBC4 in Quincy Jones: The Many Lives of Q. Deborah left the BBC after 15 years, to make Bastards, a feature length independent documentary, in association with the Film Agency for Wales. She and her collaborator Nora Fakim shared a room in a Casablanca slum for eight weeks, living amongst their film subjects – feisty single mothers fighting for justice for their outcast children, using Morocco’s radical new laws. Since 2015, she has chaired the Moroccan Children’s Trust and is currently a Trustee of Cardiff Women’s Aid. She is also a Welsh government-appointed member of the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority, (BBNPA). Learn More