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🇹🇳 Tunisia /Culture & Society

Amman International Film Festival - "My Father and Kadhafi" by Jihan K.: Rebuilding a father, reclaiming memory

From La Presse · () French

Translated from French, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

In-depth Sources not specified Context piece
  • "My Father and Kadhafi," a documentary by Jihan K., was presented at the Amman International Film Festival.
  • The film explores the director's quest to reconstruct the memory of her father, a political opponent of Muammar Gaddafi.
  • It uses archival footage, family videos, and interviews to piece together the identity of her absent father and, by extension, Libya itself.

At the Amman International Film Festival, Jihan K.'s documentary "My Father and Kadhafi" offers a deeply personal exploration of memory and identity. The film centers on the director's lifelong search to understand her father, Mansur Rashid Kikhia, a former Libyan foreign minister and a prominent opposition figure who disappeared in 1993.

Jihan Kikhia was only six years old when her father left for Cairo and never returned. His abduction from a hotel in Tripoli occurred during a period of increasing political repression and enforced disappearances under Muammar Gaddafi's regime. For nearly two decades, his family was left to wonder about his fate.

She does not film only the story of an opponent of the Muammar Kadhafi regime. She undertakes a more intimate quest: that of a daughter trying to reconstruct the portrait of a father of whom almost nothing remains.

— La PresseThe publication describes the film's dual focus on political history and personal memory.

The documentary transcends a simple historical account of a political dissident. Kikhia uses cinema as a tool to meticulously reconstruct her father's portrait, assembling fragments of his life through interviews, archival materials, and home videos. The film embraces silences and absences, recognizing that these gaps are integral to the narrative of a disappearance.

Ultimately, the film seeks not just to uncover where her father might be, but to understand who he was. As Kikhia delves into the memories of others, she builds a connection to the father she barely knew. The documentary suggests that her father's fragmented existence mirrors the state of Libya itself, a country she knows more through stories and archives than personal experience.

She digs into the memories of others to prevent her father from disappearing a second time.

— La PresseThe publication explains the director's motivation for creating the film.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by La Presse in French. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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