Race is on to film Bhutto’s life

At least two film-makers are racing to make biopics about the life of Benazir Bhutto, the recently assassinated Pakistani politician. In the lead is the Indian director Mahesh Bhatt, who is known for movies such as Aarth and Saaransh, which doubled as powerful social commentaries. Bhatt, who has always campaigned for cordial India-Pakistan relations, says his film will concentrate on the softer, humane side of Bhutto, whom Indians fondly remember from a visit she made to the country in the 1970s.

Benazir was 19 years old when she accompanied her father, Zulifikar Ali Bhutto, to the north Indian hill resort of Shimla for peace talks between the two countries. Benazir was a hit with the local crowds, and charmed her way into their hearts, the rancour of the India-Pakistan war all but forgotten.

Bhatt has chosen Indian actress Shabana Azmi to play Benazir. Azmi played the anguished wife in Aarth, and was a leading actress in several new-wave Indian movies of the early 1970s, including Shyam Benegal's Ankur and Nishant. She is also a renowned social activist, having fought for the rights of the country’s poor and exploited. "The trouble is that I can never keep quiet," she once told Time magazine. Her relentless battle against religious extremism has often been seen as an extension of her cinema roles.

But Mahesh Bhatt apparently has a powerful rival who was already planning a film before Benazir's death - Hollywood actor and director, Robert Redford. No details are yet available about the Redford project, but it is though Benazir Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, is likely to give his support to a big American production. That needn't stop Bhatt, who is known for working at a furious pace .