Muhannad Lamin

“There was excitement in the air,” says Donga, now in his late twenties, describing his feelings when the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi’s rule broke out in 2011. He was 19, living in Misrata, and boldly went to film the fighting with a friend. A decade later, in a hotel in Istanbul, where he has been living since he was wounded in battle, he looks back on the past ten years through excerpts from his videos. And he reflects on how that period has affected him.

Prisoner and Jailer tells the story of two contrasting Libyans: a key official in the former regime and one of the most prominent figures of the post-revolutionary period in Libya. Through these two characters, we discover the circumstances surrounding one of the most influential events in modern Libyan history: The Abu Salim Prison Massacre.