For the past two years I’ve been lending out (or pushing) the late Pakistani prime minster Benazir Bhutto’s autobiography “Daughter of Destiny” to every bibliophile friend who will take it. No matter your politics, it’s a fantastic reflection of a complex political life whose elements included nuclear arms, young children, and presidential imprisonment.
The new documentary “Bhutto” directed by San Franciscan Duane Baughman is similarly intriguing in its portrayal of the politician who pushed for women’s right to vote in a country where honor killings are still legal. The visual description of internal conflicts within the South Asian country since the 1930s are fantastically designed. At the packed morning screening I covered at Sundance, producer Amy Berg described how cassette tapes from the late 1980s were salvaged to narrate the film, and the result–Bhutto narrating her the film three years after her death–is haunting.