My Father and Qaddafi

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 a peaceful opposition leader. Kikhia was obsessively loyal to his country but ultimately, his determination to reason with Qaddafi led to his disappearance from a hotel in Egypt in 1993.

Jihan’s mother Baha 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.

Mansur Rashid Kikhia was the former foreign minister of Libya, ambassador to the United Nations, and a human rights lawyer. In 1980, he defected from the Libyan government and became the peaceful opposition leader to Qaddafi’s regime. In 2012, his body was found frozen and fully intact near Qaddafi’s palace.

For 19 years, Jihan and her family were living between two worlds: the political and the personal. While she and her siblings were busy memorizing dance routines and watching Disney movies at home, their mother, Baha Omary Kikhia, was navigating the often suspicious political agendas of the United States, Libya, and Egypt. Soon Baha, a Syrian-American artist, became an unexpected player in a dangerous political game with some of the most powerful political figures in the world. Her mission would eventually lead her to the Libyan Desert in the middle of the night, alone face to face with Qaddafi to negotiate her husband’s release.

"Searching for Kikhia" is navigated from Jihan’s perspective as she tries to understand the country that both created her father and killed him. She approaches politics not as a distant subject, but as a lived experience that penetrates deeply into every human relationship - even between a little girl and her father.