Written, produced and directed by Abdelkarim El-Fassi, Porte Bagage, meaning “luggage rack”, marks the Rotterdam-based director’s fiction feature debut, although he has also worked as a documentary producer through his production company. Here, El-Fassi takes a stab at the well-worn tale of siblings needing to deal with the illness or death of a parent – but he carves it, uniquely, into the form of a road movie. Written as a drama with comedic elements, the movie most recently screened in the Moroccan Panorama sidebar of the 2025 Marrakech International Film Festival.

We follow a Dutch family of Moroccan descent living in the Netherlands, and our heroine is Noor (Ahlaam Teghadouini), a talented chef encouraged by her boss to seek opportunities in Paris. However, even after she is offered her dream job, she feels strong filial ties to her ailing father, Musa (Mahjoub Benmoussa), who is in the early stages of dementia and requires frequent care. However, a series of events leads Musa to want to return to live in Morocco – but he insists they can only go by car. Musa, Noor, her two brothers and her nephew thus set out on a redemptive road trip laden with heavy physical and emotional baggage, particularly in the butting of heads between Noor and her older brother Farid (Mohammed Chaara).

Porte Bagage uses Noor’s job offer and her father’s dementia diagnosis as a mere catalyst for the bulk of the story, leaving the characters feeling somewhat underdeveloped and the plot points hasty. El-Fassi makes up for much of it through rich discussions that will resonate with anyone feeling torn between responsibilities or trying to do the right thing for family – whatever that might mean. Nevertheless, the film’s creeping challenge does become the dialogue-heavy scenes embedded with exposition in order to allow us to understand the extant spat between Noor and Farid, who feud over who’s really responsible for taking care of their father.

As one might expect, it is the journey and not the outcome that is the most rewarding part of this tale. Porte Bagage ends roughly where it sets out to conclude without taking any unexpected turns, although viewers might wish that it took Noor’s chef storyline further along, which is otherwise only illustrated by a few short moments and is forgotten about amidst the larger familial drama. Regardless, El-Fassi has put forth a valiant debut effort with clear emotional roots, a film deserving of more attention and a quiet, welcome reminder – even if not the point of the film – that Moroccan diasporic stories also exist outside of the French context.

Porte Bagage is a Dutch production by El-Fassi’s Zouka and is sold internationally by MMM Film Sales.