Horrible issues occur to individuals each day: Wars rage, good individuals are betrayed, nefarious governments conspire, and innocents are left to make sense of all of it. When “My Father and Qaddafi” filmmaker Jihan Ok asks her uncle if they are going to ever know the true particulars of what occurred to her father, the Libyan politician Mansur Rashid Kikhia, he appears bemused, seeing his beloved cousin’s loss of life as only one droplet in a sea of tragedy. He tells the filmmaker “The nation itself is collapsing,” and “younger individuals die such as you drink water.”
However for the filmmaker and her household, solutions are wanted. It’s the not realizing that’s so painful. Who kidnapped her father? Beneath what circumstances? Was he imprisoned, or murdered, or each, and can they ever have a graveside to go to?
Jihan’s astonishing documentary is a testomony to an astonishing man; it’s the work of a gifted younger filmmaker who picked up a digicam at an early age as a way to communicate her lacking father again into existence. “My Father and Qaddafi” charts the story of Libya’s previous century with a clear-eyed view on one in all its most public tragedies: The 1993 abduction of former Libyan ambassador turned opposition chief Mansur Rashid Kikhia from a human rights convention at a Cairo resort, information of and accountability for which was denied by each the Egyptian and Libyan authorities. The ambassador left behind his Syrian-American spouse Baha Al Omary, and the 4 kids they had been elevating collectively, the youngest of whom has made this extraordinary movie to cope with what occurred to the daddy she has no recollections of — and to the beloved nation they shared.
There might be little to really feel optimistic about because the movie, in its central acts, kinetically charts the historical past of Libya and its patterns of resistance: half-remembered genocides, colonization, and a put up–Arab Spring civil battle that has seen a lot of the nation lie in ruins. The fates of so many had been selected the 1969 day when a dashing and sadly underestimated 25-year-old Colonel Qaddafi seized energy from the monarchy in a matter of hours and promised a brand new golden period, impressed by Egypt’s President Nasser.
The historical past of Libya doesn’t repeat itself, nevertheless it typically rhymes, every era nostalgic for the great outdated days that preceded them, papering over its brutality. Within the current, even the surviving former opposition leaders lengthy for a return to the Qaddafi regime, saying, “Now it’s even worse than with Qaddafi. Then we had one dictator, now we now have 1000.” However even together with his tyranny in current reminiscence, it’s nonetheless outstanding to see what an undignified finish this as soon as pompous and preening man would ultimately face: killed by the individuals he oppressed, dragged by the streets together with his bloodied corpse, then saved in a restaurant fridge the place individuals would queue and even convey their kids to catch a look and enjoy his long-overdue demise.
Jihan’s mom, whose insightfulness and dignity can’t be overstated, provides a measured response: that regardless of what she and her household have been by, she can not “rejoice loss of life.” She is the movie’s most compelling and enchanting voice, and whereas it’s onerous to grasp simply how her good-looking husband — she would recognize me mentioning, as she ceaselessly does, simply how good-looking he’s — might danger leaving her a single mom, she insists that his kidnapping reworked her from a standard girl and right into a mighty “sword.” Although it’s deeply tragic that this household misplaced a mum or dad who rose to prominence in his struggle for the widespread man, the one who remained behind is simply as formidable.
Greater than only a portrait of Kikhia’s fascinating life, his daughter’s movie provides an beautiful depiction of each craving and the complexity of the grieving course of. In every body, Jihan longs to not simply know what occurred to her father, but in addition to know her father in any respect. Her loving older brother can recall the sentiments he had when his father was current, however for her, rather than any recollections, she has solely pictures, newspaper clippings, and the odd little bit of footage (by which he’s all the time impeccably turned out, and sometimes seen reveling within the joys of fatherhood).
Jihan friends nearer at these photos, now sensing in a few of them that her father appears preoccupied, as if already conscious of the tragic destiny that may befall him. She additionally contends with the information that he knew and accepted the dangers of his journey to Cairo, and the way it might doubtlessly go away her to develop up fatherless. However as her mom places it, “Demise is one, however the methods you die are many,” and her father stood up for the lives of Libyans regardless of the horrors that he was conscious might lie forward.
For all of its formal magnificence, “My Father and Qaddafi” can also be thrilling. Many solutions to questions that in the first place appear futile to pursue are ultimately solved and their solutions punctuate the movie’s devastating remaining act, which hits like a punch within the coronary heart, because the options are completely grotesque, begging the query of whether or not maybe not realizing would have been a kindness to those already beleaguered individuals. However there’s a steadiness right here, and the movie’s grief is mercifully punctuated with pleasure: residence video footage of piano observe, of Jihan’s mom radiant as she recollects a courtship with a (good-looking) highly effective man who believed in her inventive expertise, and of a Thanksgiving the place Jihan’s older siblings joke about being grateful for America’s colonial spirit.
In complete, Jihan’s movie is each an act of remembrance and resistance writ massive. In a world the place decency can really feel futile, “My Father and Qaddafi” presents a narrative that compels you to be first rate anyway. We watch a person refusing to simply accept that his countrymen stay their lives in oppression, a lady refusing to let her husband’s sacrifice be brushed apart by nefarious forces, and a younger filmmaker refusing to let her father’s narrative be managed by those that didn’t love him. It’s a really inspiring work and a credit score to Jihan that even with so private a topic she is ready to convey each the micro and macro stakes. Horrible issues occur on this movie, simply as horrible issues proceed to occur within the locations that Mansur Rashid Kikhia held so expensive, however we should, as he did, one way or the other discover the power to withstand.
Grade: A-
“My Father and Qaddafi” premiered on the 2025 Venice Movie Competition. It’s looking for U.S. distribution.
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