film

Released last year, Jihan K’s debut feature documentary is part intimate family portrait and part compelling work of political history. When Jihan was six, her father, Mansur Rashid Kikhia, disappeared from a hotel in Cairo. A human rights lawyer, former foreign minister of Libya and ambassador to the UN, Kikhia had broken with Muammar Qaddafi’s increasingly repressive regime to become a leading figure in the peaceful opposition. His wife, the Syrian-American artist Baha Al Omary, spent 19 years searching for him, eventually discovering that he had been killed and his body hidden near Qaddafi’s palace.

Combining archival footage, family testimony and interviews with her father’s former colleagues, Jihan sets out to reconstruct the life of a man she barely remembers. What emerges is a deeply personal exploration of political repression, exile, memory and identity, as well as a daughter's attempt to understand the father behind the historical figure. This screening is part of Filmoteca's Mostra de Cinema Àrab i Mediterrani de Catalunya season.