A daughter unravels the disappearance of her father, the peaceful opposition leader to Qaddafi, and pieces together her mother’s 19-year search to find him. Without any memory of her father, she tries to reconnect with him and reconcile with her Libyan identity.
Synopsis (88 minutes – USA, Libya)
When Jihan was six years old, her father flew to Cairo and never returned. Mansur Rashid Kikhia was the Foreign Minister of Libya, ambassador to the United Nations, and a human rights lawyer. After serving in Qaddafi’s increasingly brutal regime, he defected from the government and became the leader of the peaceful opposition. For many, Kikhia was a rising star who could have been the next leader of Libya, however, in 1993 he disappeared from his hotel in Egypt.
Jihan’s mother Baha Al Omary, a strong-willed Syrian-American artist, began searching for him, launching the family into an international political maze. Her mission to find justice brought her to the Libyan desert in the middle of the night, face to face with Qaddafi to negotiate her husband’s release. Yet it wasn’t until after the regime’s fall, 19 years later, that his body was found in a freezer near Qaddafi’s palace.
My Father and Qaddafi takes the audience on a raw and reflective journey as Jihan pieces together a father she barely remembers, while discovering the troubled history and politics of Libya. Her journey starts from fading personal memories, leading to encounters with family members, her father’s peers, and historical archive footage.
Hoping at first to uncover the truth, Jihan instead transforms the mystery into a curiosity that brings her closer to her father and her Libyan identity. She approaches politics not as a distant subject, but as a lived experience that penetrates into every human relationship – even between a little girl and her father.
Director’s Bio
Jihan was born in exile and raised in Paris while her father, a Libyan human rights lawyer, was the peaceful opposition leader to Qaddafi’s regime. After her father disappeared from Cairo, her family lived between the United States and France, while her mother, a Syrian artist, fought for justice in an international campaign. Jihan received her BA in International and Comparative Politics with a concentration in Human Rights, Philosophy, and International Law and her MA in Art Education and Storytelling.
Director’s Statement
I don’t want my father to disappear a second time. I feel an urgency to overcome my void in the midst of Libya’s relentless chaos and instability, which I fear will eventually bury my connection to Libya. In my documentary film, My Father and Qaddafi, I search through other people’s memories trying to create a clearer picture of my father who I don’t remember.
Making this documentary helps me understand the importance of a father figure and the impact of losing a father on a family, a community, and even a country. Sharing my father’s untold story is also sharing an untold story of Libya, one that spans almost one century of Libyan history and politics. As I reflect with my father’s colleagues over their lost Libya, I wish I could ask my father, how did we end up like this? And how is Libya going to break free from this cycle of trouble?
As I reconstruct my father’s portrait, I plant the seed for a deeper, more honest connection with him and to free my hidden voice. Instead of compartmentalizing my father as a one-dimensional hero from the past, I search for the man behind the myth and try to reintegrate him into my present life as a human being and a loving father.
Since I was 6 years old, my mother told us the truth, and although this has tempered the shock, I still struggle with a constant surreal feeling. Despite my fragmented memories, my fears, and my cultural limitations in Libyan society, I am trying to overcome this surreal feeling and reconnect with my father and with Libya on my own terms, as an open hearted woman. This is one of the ways I am hoping to hold my father before he disappears completely from my memory and even potentially from Libya’s memory.
Jihan
The event is supported by the Alumni Fund of the University of Liverpool, in collaboration with Wedad Areigib, Aseel Halab and Elaf Bazza with Dr Barbara Spadaro of the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures at the University of Liverpool.
