Muammar Gaddafi

His oil income was a billion dollars a week, and he used torture and murder to silence the opposition. Is this why Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi was called a 'mad dog' by Ronald Reagan? No other dictator so cannily threatened to turn Western powers to cowed appeasers. This dense, powerful film interviews those he bereaved, the ones who tried to stop him - and the people who assisted his tyranny.

Qaddafi’s Female Bodyguards takes a fascinating look inside one of the Mid-East's most unusual military units, Libya's elite female military corps who were assigned to guard the country's supreme leader, Mohmmar Qaddafi. The film examines how these women embody the tension between Islam and modernization in a nomadic society, between feminism and an old-style dictatorship.

Ruling with an iron fist requires an aspiring dictator to know the art of absolute power, as history's despots prove in this sardonic documentary series.