Pakistan: Anatomy of a State

Geographically and culturally remote from the Occident, Pakistan has long gone unnoticed. Yet, for the past 40 years, it has played a decisive role in the fate of Europe and the United States.

The country was born in 1947 against a backdrop of extreme violence: the Partition of India that aggravated tensions between Muslims and Hindus. Isolated, caught between Afghanistan and its Indian enemy, Pakistan thus had to forge its own identity. To reinforce its domination, the military used Islam as an instrument and staged a series of coups, jeopardizing the moves towards democracy. To retake Kashmir and strengthen its role on the international stage, the army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ICI) played a double game with the West…

From supporting the Afghans and Americans in the face of the 1980s Soviet invasion, through the hunt of Bin Laden, to the rise of an international jihadism linked with large-scale attacks in Mumbai, London or Paris, we’ll be immersed in the 75-year history of the "land of the pure" and traces its complex political trajectory - from the dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq to the government of Imran Khan, via that of Benazir Bhutto.

Mixing archival footage with cinematographic shots of the country’s landscapes and inhabitants, anonymous testimonies of jihadists with those of civilians, the film offers an unprecedented investigation.