scenes

This season’s Oscar nominees for film editing have one thing in common: coping with trauma. The Envelope invited editors from each film to break down a pivotal scene that showcased their craft.

‘F1’

“F1” builds momentum for its underdog tale with an intricately constructed racing montage.

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Editor: Stephen Mirrione
Scene: The montage in which Brad Pitt’s washed-up racer Sonny Hayes begins his winning streak through a momentum-building Grand Prix swing.

“There were more than a dozen structural versions of how we were getting through this story,” said Oscar winner Mirrione (“Traffic”). The three-minute, high-octane montage benefited from 5,000 hours of footage, captured with 20 cameras around the tracks. It was treated like a massive puzzle, with the racing order moved around for maximum impact. The key was seamlessly integrating in-camera footage with broadcast footage from actual races that offered happy accidents such as rain and a crash. “At one point, it was more focused on rookie driver Joshua [Damson Idris],” added Mirrione. “But then we realized that Sonny was more interesting, visually, in terms of his arc about dealing with the trauma of his near-fatal crash. And then once we saw it in context, it was not just about the two of them and their rivalry but also the team coalescing around Sonny.”

‘Marty Supreme’

A dinner in “Marty Supreme,” starring Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, leads to a startling flashback.

(A24)

Editors: Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie
Scene: The jarring dinner scene/Holocaust flashback introducing nasty businessman Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary)

In this scene from the 1950s-set psychological drama, we get a glimpse of Marty’s (Timothée Chalamet) motivation for his obsessive pursuit of table tennis: Jewish pride and survival instinct. “The adversarial impulse of the Rockwell dinner scene involves several characters, each with a distinct subjective agenda,” said Bronstein. “The act of cutting the scene [with close-ups and extreme close-ups] became inseparable from its sensations and emotions.” Yet Bronstein pushed it to extremes with the bizarre Auschwitz flashback involving Marty’s dinner guest, Béla (Géza Röhrig). Thanks to his table tennis prowess, Béla disarms bombs for the Nazis in the woods. But when he discovers a beehive, he shares the honey with his fellow prisoners by smearing it over his body. “That’s like a carrot on a rope that’s hanging in front of me at all times, and when I get to the end of that exchange, I’m allowed to break free and go into an entirely new set of tools, which are much more expressive,” added Bronstein.

‘One Battle After Another’

Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob Ferguson, nearing the conclusion of “One Battle After Another’s” climactic car chase.

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Editor: Andy Jurgensen
Scene: The climactic roller-coaster car chase

Jurgensen assembled the best VistaVision car chase in history for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s turbulent father-daughter actioner. That’s where teenage Willa (Chase Infiniti) becomes the hero by outsmarting and killing the hired muscle (John Hoogenakker), who chases her up and down the rolling hills followed closely by Willa’s flummoxed ex-revolutionary dad, Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio). Shot at shaky high speeds, the scene actually took shape as a result of the unique San Diego location called the Texas Dip, which looks epic in the 8 perf/35mm horizontal format. The Hitchcockian cross-cutting among the three cars, favoring Willa’s POV, was achieved with close-ups from rearview and side mirrors. The layering of the propulsive soundscape and Jonny Greenwood’s percussive score completed the adrenaline rush. But the tender father-daughter reunion at the end required reshooting. “The moment Bob pulled up to the crash site, when we first did the scene, he ran over to her right away, and they embraced,” Jurgensen recalled. “When we watched the dailies, it just didn’t feel authentic. So we reshot it with more meat: Willa second-guessing everybody and Bob having to earn her trust by proving his identity with the secret code.”

‘Sentimental Value’

Renate Reinsve’s Nora plays a part in her father’s new film in “Sentimental Value.”

(Kaspar Tuxen Andersen)

Editor: Olivier Bugge Coutté
Scene: Actor Nora Borg’s (Renate Reinsve) early stage fright breakdown

Joachim Trier’s family drama finds Nora confronting the Borgs’ generational trauma when she reunites with her estranged director father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård). After an opening montage on the layered history of their Oslo home, which Nora once wrote about in a school essay, our introduction to the adult Nora is conveyed by the chaos and humor of her panic attack before a performance. But finding this arresting sequence first required trimming a very long setup of patrons entering the theater and sitting down, and the camera discovering Nora, frozen in fear, in the back of the dark stage. “It was so boring,” Coutté insisted. “But here we’re starting right on Nora’s face. Where are we? Has she become an actress? And then you slowly understand. There are no rules; just rhythm.”

‘Sinners’

Jayme Lawson performs “Pale, Pale Moon” in a pivotal scene from “Sinners.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Editor: Michael P. Shawver
Scene: Pearline’s (Jayme Lawson) violence-inducing “Pale, Pale Moon” performance

In Ryan Coogler’s Imax spectacle, where the blues collides with vampires, the monstrous transformation commences with Pearline’s siren call: “Pale, Pale Moon.” This was Shawver’s boldest sequence, cross-cutting her mesmerizing performance with the rhythmic crowd stomping, the brutal beating of a card cheater and newbie vampire Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) seducing and murdering Stack (Michael B. Jordan). “When this was first cut together, it was about three or four times as long as the actual song that had been recorded and performed,” explained Shawver. “And so Ryan watched it and he liked what he saw, but he wanted to cut it to the length of the song. That first moment I wondered if I was the right editor, but that fear and anxiety gives you a bit of freedom to find those spiritual connections that built to this climax at the end. It was really just about Ryan’s ability to engage audiences on a personal level and unlock those things and find the ways that they can go together.”

FROM Barbie to Harley Quinn, it’s fair to say Margot Robbie has range when it comes to her on-screen roles – and the actress has had her fair share of X-rated on-screen romps too.

And with new romance flick Wuthering Heights just days away from it’s Valentine’s release, fans are set to see Margot, 35, getting very steamy with co-star Jacob Elordi, 28.

In fact, fans have even dubbed some scenes in the film’s trailer “softcore porn”.

However, this won’t be the only time Margot has stripped down for a role, as we take a look at some of her steamiest movie moments.

Full frontal nudity

It was Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street that launched Margot’s career into the juggernaut it is now, as she starred across from leading man Leonardo DiCaprio in the comedy thriller.

Portraying his ultra-confident wife Naomi, Margot didn’t hold back during the 2013 role – which got extremely X-rated.

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During the film, Margot is seen completely nude for a full frontal sex-scene with Leonardo’s stockbroker character Jordan.

And following the film’s release, Margot admitted that being completely naked was her idea.

After director Martin suggested she could be in a robe, Margot replied that it didn’t feel genuine to the character.

“That’s not what she [Naomi] would do in that scene.

“The whole point is that she’s going to come out completely naked —that’s the card she’s playing,” Margot explained during an appearance on the Talking Pictures podcast. 

The film also sees Margot seductively pushing a drooling Leo away with her stiletto heel in a scene which depicts the power she holds in sex.

While one scene showed Margot and Leonardo’s characters having sex on top of stacks of cash, the former later admitted she was left with a multitude of paper cuts from filming naked on the money stacks.

“If anyone is ever planning on having sex on top of a pile of cash: don’t,” joked Margot.

Steamy pole dancing

In 2018 noir thriller film Terminal, Margot portrays unassuming waitress Annie who is actually working strategically as an assassin.

As part of her act, Annie uses her sexuality to get what she wants from men and to distract them.

And a good job she does at that.

In one scene, Margot strips to black lacy lingerie and matching stockings, with her hair styled in Hollywood curls and a deep green lipstick making her mouth and eyes pop.

She then performs a seductive pole dancing routine at a strip club, which leaves her male counterparts fawning on the stage sidelines.

Steamy shower scenes

From one criminal activity to another, Margot portrays a bank robber on the run in thriller Dreamland, which was released in 2019.

While taking shelter, she develops a romantic relationship with Eugene Evans, played by Peaky Blinder’s star Finn Cole.

As their bond deepens throughout the film, the pair are seen having some steamy moments – including a shower scene.

In the scene, Margot and Finn are completely naked in the shower together as they have a very sexually-charged moment.

Provocative dance moves

In a film all about decadence and outrageous Hollywood behaviour, Margot portrays a rising “IT girl” movie star who grapples with her own internal struggles in 2022 movie Babylon.

Starring alongside Brad Pitt, Margot’s character Nellie is acting out a scene when she is provocatively dancing on top of a bar.

With bright red lipstick on and her blonde locks in a wild curl, Nellie breaks out into a manic dance during the scene, which includes the starlet flashing her underwear by bending over.

Margot’s performance may have been good in the film, but the box office showed that Babylon wasn’t the hit many expected it to be.

Admitting she is “shocked” by the film’s failure to capture the audience, Margot previously said: “I love it.

“I don’t get it either. I know I am biased because I am very close to the project and I obviously believe in it, but I still can’t figure out why people hated it. I wonder if in 20 years people are going to be like, ‘Wait, “Babylon” didn’t do well at the time?’

“Like when you hear that ‘Shawshank Redemption’ was a failure at the time and you’re like, ‘How is that possible?’”

Ultra X-rated

Wuthering Heights is set to hit screens next week, and from what we’ve seen so far, there will be a fair amount of sexual tension between Margot and Jacob Elordi’s character.

Margot plays protagonist Catherine Earnshaw from Emily Bronte’s classic novel set in wind-swept Yorkshire, which depicts her epic romance with Heathcliff, played by Jacob.

The first teaser trailer for the feature film sees suggestive imagery used in scenes showing the kneading of bread and breaking of eggs.

Margot is also seen with fingers over her face before servant Heathcliff’s sweaty back, presumably in a moment of intimacy, is captured.

Other moments show character Catherine’s heart beating strongly before scenes flick to her hand in the mouth of the Earnshaw family’s foster son.

Catherine is also seen blindfolded while the final scene in the trailer sees Heathcliff ask her: “Are you alright, do you want me to stop?”

She simply replies: “No,” while holding his hand.

He is then seen opening her corset and sliding his hands over her face before fans were left bemused at scenes showing a finger being inserted into a fish’s mouth.

Fans have already reacted strongly to the snippets of action they’ve seen so far – with comments all along a similar line.

One wrote: “Just saw the teaser for #WutheringHeights and it is way worse than I expected… is it me or is it giving soft porn vibes???”

Another mused: “#WutheringHeightsMovie is the 50 Shades Of Grey we never got.”

While director Emerald Fennell has described the film as “primal” and “sexual”, Margot said in December that it is more about the romance.

“Everyone’s expecting this to be very, very raunchy. I think people will be surprised,” she explained.

The star added: “Not to say there aren’t sexual elements and that it’s not provocative — it definitely is provocative — but it’s more romantic than provocative”.

FROM playing a seductive robot in 2024 thriller Subservience to taking part in an on-screen lesbian romp in 2009 flick Jennifer’s Body, Megan Fox has acted her fair share of steamy scenes.

The actress, 39, was spotted on a rare outing last week with her children, after it was reported she and ex-fiancé Machine Gun Kelly are completely “done” with one another romantically.

Megan and the rapper, real name Colson Baker, began their relationship in 2020 and first split in 2024, before an on/off relationship up until last year.

The former couple are now focusing on co-parenting their daughter, Saga, who turns one in March.

While her real-life romance may be cooling off, Megan’s had plenty of steamy scenes on-screen.

First rising to fame in Transformers, the actress has appeared in several blockbusters in the near-two-decades since.

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Here, we take a look at her steamiest scenes…

Subservience – 2024

Appearing in 2024 thriller Subservience, Megan portrayed a robot who was bought to help a dad – who is solo parenting while his wife is sick in hospital – with house chores.

However, her AI-built character Alice ends up slightly too lifelike as she develops intense feelings for her owner Nick, portrayed by 365 Days hunk Michele Morrone.

Not stopping until she gets what she wants, Alice intensely pursues Nick and the pair end up in a very steamy bathroom sex scene.

Stripping down to her underwear, Megan is seen seducing her co-star before blindfolding him and mounting him in intense scenes.

Jennifer’s body – 2007

It’s not just later in her career that Megan has had some hot-and-heavy scenes, with her 2007 film Jennifer’s body featuring a very steamy scene with Amanda Seyfried.

The horror flick sees Megan’s teenage character Jennifer become possessed to be a succubus.

Jennifer seduces a number of her male classmates and has a lesbian romp with Amanda’s character Anita.

Previously, Megan said of the scenes: “I feel much safer with girls, so I felt more comfortable kissing [Seyfried] than kissing any of the other people that I had to kiss.”

Passion Play – 2010

While drama flick Passion Play may not have done wonders in the box office, it did see Megan star alongside Mickey Rourke in one of her most sultry movie roles.

She plays the character of Lily Luster, who has large wings throughout the film and is known as a “bird woman”.

Megan and Mickey’s character, Nate, have several intimate scenes throughout the film – with one showing the former completely naked other than a pair of underwear.

Expend4bles – 2023

Starring as CIA agent Gina in the fourth instalment of the Expendables, Megan acts across from action star Jason Statham, who portrays Lee Christmas.

In the flick, Lee and Gina have romantic history which is clear to see in several scenes throughout the movie – including in a steamy bedroom moment.

Big Gold Brick – 2022

2022’s dark comedy Big Gold Brick had some talented actors to it’s name, but wasn’t a hit amongst fans.

In the film, Megan plays Jacqueline Devereaux, the wife of Floyd Devereaux – who enlists a man to pen his biography.

Throughout the storyline, Megan is seen donning racy underwear and stripping down to lingerie.

However, some critics slammed these scenes as they claimed Megan and co-star Lucy Hale were solely seen as “sex objects” during the film.

How To Lose Friends & Alienate people – 2008

Megan got many viewers hot under the collar during her 2008 appearance in comedy How to Lose Friends & Alienate People.

Portraying starlet Sophie Maes, Megan is seen stripping down to lingerie in several scenes.

While one iconic moment sees the star in a plunging figure-hugging dress as she walks through a swimming pool, before dropping the dress at the end of the pool.

She stars across from Simon Pegg, who plays main character Sidney Young – a celebrity journalist taken by Sophie.

The Dictator – 2012

Portraying herself in a cameo during comedy/drama The Dictator, Megan is seen as a celebrity companion for lead character Aladeen, portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen.

During the scene, Aladeen is seen shouting the actress’s name while they are in bed together, before telling her: “Megan, you were worth every penny.”

He then presents her with a bag of gold, to which Megan – who is putting her clothes back on- replies: “Katy Perry said she got a diamond Rolex.”

Megan later said she “loved” the cameo appearance in the comedy, which was a change of pace from her previous roles.

This Is 40 – 2012

While Megan didn’t have a leading part in the ensemble cast of This Is 40, she did make her mark on the flick.

Portraying a young shop worker at main character Debbie’s (Leslie Mann) clothing boutique, Megan’s character has her middle-aged counterparts feeling jealous as she portrays the “hot new employee”.

Megan is even seen stripping to her underwear inside the shop, leaving Debbie seething.

MGK’S Good Mourning – 2022

When Machine Gun Kelly decided to make his own comedy film, he enlisted his then-partner Megan to star in the flick.

Good Mourning – which has since been branded “unwatchable” – follows the musician portraying actor character London Clash, who’s convinced he’s about to land a career-changing role.

Megan plays Kennedy in the short film, and while she and MGK are a couple in real life, there aren’t a wave of sultry scenes between the two.

Instead, Megan’s character brings her own sex appeal and has London Clash drooling.

Jonah Hex – 2010

Action film Jonah Hex sees Megan portray a prostitute who falls for leading man Josh Brolin.

In the film, his character is seen spending the night in a brothel with Megan, who steamily kisses him before rubbing against him in bed.

Megan’s burlesque-style outfits in the film also left fans in awe, as she donned a corset with matching stockings and fingerless gloves.

Transformers – 2007

Megan’s breakout role as Mikaela Banes in the Transformers franchise didn’t incorporate X-rated scenes, but did catapult her to fame as a global leading lady.

The movie franchise portrayed Megan as a sex symbol, something she later shared her frustrations over.

“Really my only job is to look attractive,” she told GQ back in 2009. “I was so angry about that,” added the star.

She later got axed from the third Transformers movie for making controversial comments about director Michael Bay – comparing him to Hitler and dubbing him a “d***”.

In Dhaka’s political chatter, one word often keeps resurfacing when people debate who really holds the reins of the country: “Kochukhet”.

The neighbourhood that houses key military installations has, in recent public discussions, become shorthand for the cantonment’s influence over civilian matters, including politics.

Bangladesh is weeks away from a national election on February 12, the first since the 2024 uprising that ended then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s long rule and ushered in an interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.

The army is not vying for electoral power. But it has become central to the voting climate as the most visible guarantor of public order, with the police still weakened in morale and capacity after the upheaval of 2024, and with the country still reckoning with a “security apparatus” that watchdogs and official inquiries say was used to shape political outcomes under Hasina.

For nearly a year and a half now, soldiers have policed the streets of Bangladesh, operating under an order that grants them magisterial powers in support of law and order. On election duty, the deployment will scale up further: Officials have said as many as 100,000 troops are expected nationwide, and proposed changes to election rules would formally list the armed forces among the poll’s “law-enforcing agencies”.

Bangladesh, a nation of more than 170 million wedged between India and Myanmar, has repeatedly seen political transitions hijacked by coups, counter-coups and military rule, a past that still shapes how Bangladeshis read the present.  Analysts say that the army today is not positioned for an overt takeover, but it remains a decisive power centre: an institution embedded across the state, able to narrow civilian choices through its security role, intelligence networks and footprint inside government.

The military’s role now

Thomas Kean, the International Crisis Group’s senior consultant on Bangladesh and Myanmar, said the army has been “backstopping the interim government” not only politically but also “through day-to-day security amid police weakness”.

He said the institution is eager to see a transition to an elected government so the country returns to a firmer constitutional footing and so troops can “return to their barracks”.

“There are different factions and views within the army, but overall I would say that the army wants to see the election take place as smoothly as possible,” Kean told Al Jazeera.

Kean argued that if the army chief, General Waker-uz-Zaman, and the military “had wanted to take power, they could have done so when the political order collapsed on August 5”, the day Hasina fled to India amid a popular student-led revolt. But the military chose not to, he said, in part because it had learned from the fallout of past experiments with its direct political control.

Asif Shahan, a political analyst and professor at Dhaka University, said the military was aware that a takeover would have also jeopardised key interests, including Bangladesh’s United Nations peacekeeping deployments, which carry both financial benefits and reputational weight for the armed forces. Bangladesh has for decades been one of the biggest suppliers to UN peacekeeping missions, and receives between $100m and $500m a year in payouts and equipment reimbursements for these services.

But Shahan argues that the military remains “an important political actor”. Today, he said, its influence is “less about overt intervention than the institutional weight it carries through the security and intelligence apparatus”.

He also pointed to what he called the army’s “corporate” footprint. That footprint spans involvement in major state infrastructure projects, the military’s own business conglomerate, and the presence of serving and retired officers across commercial and state bodies.

Shahan said the last Hasina government “gave them a share of the pie”, leaving “a kind of culture of corruption … ingrained”. He suggested that this could translate into informal pressure on whoever governs next to do the same, and anxieties inside the force over whether “the facilities and privileges” it has accumulated will shrink.

On the election itself, Shahan too said that the possibility of the army trying to gain overt control was “very low” unless there is such a major law and order breakdown that there is public demand for the army to step in as the “only source of stability”,

Others who track the military closely agreed. Rajib Hossain, a former army officer and author of the best-selling book Commando, said he “strongly believes” the army will avoid partisan involvement for its own sake. “The army will play a neutral role during this election,” he said. “What we’ve observed on the ground over the past year and a half, there is no record of the army acting in a partisan way.”

But, he added, pressure on the institution has been intense since 2024. “Internally, there’s an understanding that if the army fails to act neutrally, it could lose even the public credibility it still has,” he said.

Mustafa Kamal Rusho, a retired brigadier general at the Osmani Centre for Peace and Security Studies, also told Al Jazeera that the military does not have “any clear intent” to influence politics, though “it still remains a critical power base”.

That leverage was clearest during the 2024 uprising, Rusho said, when Bangladesh’s political crisis reached a point that many Bangladeshis and international watchdogs viewed the military’s posture as decisive. “If the military did not take the stand that it took, then there would have been more bloodshed,” he said.

With protests escalating, the military refused to fully enforce Hasina’s curfew orders and decided troops would not fire on civilians. It enabled Hasina to flee to India on an air force plane, and the army chief then announced an interim government would be formed.

In an Al Jazeera documentary on the uprising last year, Waker-uz-Zaman, who is related to Hasina and was appointed less than two months before her collapse, also stressed that his forces would not turn their guns on civilians. “We don’t shoot at civilians. It’s not in our culture … So we did not intervene,” he said.

In the same interview, he added: “We believe that the military should not engage in politics … It’s not our cup of tea.”

When the military ruled

That hasn’t always been the military’s position.

After the 1975 assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding leader and then-president, by a group of military officers, the country entered a period marked by coups, counter-coups and military rule upheavals that reshaped the state and produced political forces that still dominate elections.

One of them was the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), founded by army general-turned-ruler Ziaur Rahman, who emerged as the country’s most powerful figure in the late 1970s before moving into civilian politics. Rahman was assassinated in 1981 in a failed coup attempt by another group of military officers. The BNP remains a key contender in the February 12 vote, now led by Rahman’s son, Tarique Rahman, who has returned to front-line politics after a long exile.

In 1982, then army chief Hussain Muhammad Ershad seized power and ruled for much of the 1980s. Writer and political historian Mohiuddin Ahmed has described Ershad’s takeover as coming only months after he publicly argued that “the army should be brought in to help run the country”.

Eventually, a pro-democracy movement led by Zia’s wife, Khaleda Zia, and Hasina, also Mujibur Rahman’s daughter, forced him from office. The BNP won a landmark election, and in 1991, Khaleda became the country’s first female prime minister.

Since then, Rusho said, the military’s influence “became more indirect”, though Bangladesh still saw an abortive May 1996 showdown when the then army chief, Lieutenant General Abu Saleh Mohammad Nasim, defied presidential orders, and troops loyal to him moved towards Dhaka. Nasim was arrested and removed from office.

A decade later, in 2007, the military in effect “fully backed” a caretaker government that was formed to replace Khaleda’s second administration, which had ruled between 2001 and 2006. That caretaker government was installed in January 2007 after a breakdown in the election process and escalating political violence. The International Crisis Group described the caretaker administration as “headed by technocrats but controlled by the military”, while then-army chief Moeen U Ahmed argued the political climate “was deteriorating very rapidly” and that the military’s intervention had “quickly ended” street violence.

It was only after 2009, when Hasina came back to power – her Awami League had first ruled between 1996 and 2001 – that the military became “subordinate to the civilian regime”, Rusho said.

Blurred lines

But even though the military today insists that it does not want power, it has often drifted into the political terrain.

A major moment arrived just weeks after Hasina’s ouster, in September 2024, when General Zaman told the Reuters news agency he would back Yunus’s interim government “come what may”, while also floating a timeline for elections within 18 months. The interview, which critics described as something unprecedented for a serving army chief, placed the military close to the country’s central political debate.

Hossain, the former army officer and author, criticised the public nature of the intervention. “If he [Zaman] had discussed this after sitting with all the stakeholders … the interim [administration], political parties, protest leaders … and then gone to the media, that would be acceptable,” he said. “But here, he declared it unilaterally and blindsided the government from his position of power. He had no authority to do that.”

“You may say this is an extraordinary, transitional time and the military has a role to play,” Hossain added. “But then, why do we have an administration at all?”

Shahan, the Dhaka University professor, said Zaman “came very close” to crossing the line and explained it as a product of military institutional culture after August 5. “Military organisations … like to follow standing operating procedures, order, stability,” he said. But August 5, he added, was “a political rupture” that forced the army and the nation into uncertainty: about the interim government’s longevity, legitimacy and how it would deal with the military.

Those anxieties, Shahan said, likely pushed Zaman to speak. In principle, he said, it is reasonable for the army chief to say elections are needed for stability. But “when he set a specific timeline – within 18 months – that is beyond his role”, Shahan said. “It then appears as if he is dictating.”

Shahan added that the problem becomes sharper when that kind of specificity appears to respond to a party demand; he was referring to a time when only the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was repeatedly pushing for a vote timetable.

Eight months later, in May 2025, Zaman again weighed in, telling a high-level military gathering, according to local media reports, that his position had not changed and that the next national vote should be held by December 2025. After that, Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, a special adviser to Yunus, wrote on Facebook that “the army can’t meddle in politics” and argued that the military chief had failed to maintain “jurisdictional correctness” by prescribing an election deadline.

Around the same period, rumours emerged suggesting that Yunus had considered resigning amid political discord.

The shadow Hasina left

Another reason that analysts say the military’s role is being debated so intensely now is because of Bangladesh’s recent wounds.

During Hasina’s 15-year rule, human rights organisations argued Bangladesh’s security apparatus was often used for political control. Human Rights Watch has described enforced disappearances as a “hallmark” of Hasina’s rule since 2009.

When the United States sanctioned the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in 2021 over allegations of extrajudicial killings, the US Department of the Treasury said, “These incidents target opposition party members, journalists, and human rights activists.” Critics argue that security institutions became central to governance, and questions about how that machinery was used are now part of the post-Hasina political settlement.

Hossain, the former officer, said the Hasina-era legacy still echoes inside the top brass. “If you look at the leadership, the general, five lieutenant generals, and some major generals and brigadier generals, a lot of them were part of Hasina’s apparatus,” he said, “aside from a handful of professional officers”.

A report by Bangladesh’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances says disappearances were used as a “tool for political repression” and that the practice “reached alarming levels during key political flashpoints”, including in the run-up to elections in 2014, 2018 and 2024. The commission said it verified 1,569 cases of enforced disappearance.

In cases where political affiliation could be confirmed, the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing accounted for about 75 percent of victims, while the BNP and its affiliated groups accounted for about 22 percent. Among those “still missing or dead”, the BNP and its allies accounted for about 68 percent, while the Jamaat and its affiliates accounted for about 22 percent, the report said.

The commission also noted that the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the military-run intelligence agency, had been “accused of manipulating domestic politics and interfering in the 2014 parliamentary elections”, and argued that perceived alignment with the Awami League compromised its neutrality.

Several senior military officers, including 15 in service, are now facing trial in a civilian tribunal on charges of enforced disappearances, murders and custodial tortures.

The proceedings have become a delicate issue in civil-military relations, as cases against serving officers in civilian courts are rare in Bangladesh’s history.

Former army chief Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan wrote on Facebook that local media had reported disagreements over the “trial process” for officers accused of crimes against humanity and that those disagreements had created what he described as a “chasm” between the interim government and the army’s top leadership.

Hossain, the former officer, however, said he disagreed. “These trials are not defaming the army,” Hossain said. “Rather, they are a kind of redemption for the institution to recover from the stigma created by the crimes of some self-serving officers.”

He argued that accountability could motivate younger officers and reduce the risk of the military being politically exploited again. Rusho, the retired brigadier general, also argued that politicisation under Hasina was driven less by formal doctrine than by executive control over careers.

“Promotions, important postings, placements … they were influenced considerably by the executive branch,” he said. “When you influence postings, some people’s loyalty often gets diverted to political masters, [and] it affects … professionalism and capability.”

Kean of the International Crisis Group said the real test for Bangladesh now would be whether it can stop the security state from being reabsorbed into partisan politics.

“The military is going to remain a powerful institution in Bangladesh, with a level of influence in domestic politics,” he said. “One hopes that the lesson of the past 18 months is that the military is better to support civilian administrations rather than be in power directly – that it can be a stabilising force, and one that is ultimately committed to democracy and civilian leadership.”

But, he added, the onus to do that isn’t only on the generals. Civilian politicians, too, needed to resist the temptation to misuse the military. That alone, he suggested, would help Bangladesh keep the army in the barracks and politicians accountable to the people, not to men in khakis.