By BRANDON HARRIS | FILMMAKER MAGAZINE
Benazir Bhutto, the two time Pakistani prime minister who in 2007 was assassinated just days after she returned from military imposed exile in Dubai to once again attempt to take control of the country, was the countries’ most significant civilian political figure of her generation. Using the tragic life and times of the Muslim world’s most dynamic and successful female politician as a lens through which to capture the larger political machinations and social upheaval that has led to the sixty-seven year old Pakistani state constantly being handed back and forth between an imperiled civilian government and a conservative military establishment, Bhutto is not light on substance. However glamorous and entitled this scion of one of the country’s richest feudal families was, it’s clear in Duane Baughman’s incisive, well-researched and ultimately moving documentary that Benazir Bhutto’s motives were primarily civic duty and national pride, even if those convictions compelled her to risk her own life for the cause of civilian rule in perhaps reckless ways.
