My Father and Qaddafi

A daughter’s search for the truth about her father. Mansur Rashid Kikhia was Libya’s foreign minister and ambassador to the UN. After defecting from Moammar al-Qaddafi’s increasingly brutal government, he became a peaceful opposition leader. But in 1993, he disappeared. Now his daughter Jihan pieces together a father she barely remembers.

For many, Mansur Rashid Kikhia was a rising star who could replace Qaddafi. However, in 1993 he disappeared from his hotel in Egypt. Jihan’s mother, Baha Al Omary, searched for him for nineteen years until his body was found in a freezer near Qaddafi’s palace. Through encounters with family, her father’s colleagues, and historical archives, Jihan’s search for the truth evolves into a deeper curiosity, drawing her closer to both her father and her Libyan identity.

‘I don’t want my father to disappear a second time’, Jihan says about her documentary My Father and Qadaffi. ‘Sharing my father’s untold story is also sharing an untold story of Libya, one that spans almost one century of its 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?’ With her film, Jihan is ‘trying to reconnect with my father and with Libya on my own terms, as an open hearted woman’.