KADHAFI, OUR BEST ENEMY

by Antoine VITKINE

95 minutes, 2011

Production : Illégitime Défense, Les Films du Cabestan, avec la participation de France Télévisions, Planète, TV5 Monde / France

At the very moment when the long reign of Muammar Gaddafi is being undermined, this new documentary by director Antoine Vitkine shows some of the different deals the West has done with the Libyan leader over the years, for realpolitik, oil or terrorism. How has this godfather of international terrorism, the world’s enemy number one in the 1980’s, become rehabilitated? How has one of the most brutal dictators, a pariah placed under UN embargo after the Lockerbie bombings and the destruction of UTA’s DC10, managed, ten years later, to rub shoulders with European and American heads of state in Tripoli, Paris or New York? Interviewing some of the most important players, such as Tony Blair and Condoleeza Rice, this film looks back at forty years of relationship between the West and Gaddafi. It shows how Gaddafi used the greatest powers, but also how they used their “best enemy”.

Born in 1977, Antoine VITKINE graduated in Political Science and International Relations at IEP (Paris). He also has a doctorate at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales. As a journalist he has made a series of interviews for INA “Mémoires de la Shoah” (2005-6). For television he has made “Mein Kampf, C’était Ecrit” (2008, 55 minutes), and “Les Esclaves Oubliés” (2008, 52 minutes) for Arte; for the French channel 13ème Rue Universal he has made “Tchernobyl, Un Mensonge à la Française” (2002, 26 minutes) and “Le Syndrome de Stockholm, Otages Sous Influence”(2005, 26 minutes).