Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (PG)

From Afghan ruins and the Taliban, another amazing Makhmalbaf

The youngest of the Makhmalbaf clan of Iranian filmmakers, Hana Makhmalbaf has made her second feature before the age of 20; though Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame has an economy and control directors twice her age couldn't manage.

Set in the Afghan town of Bamian, amid the rubble of the statues of Buddha blown up by the Taliban in 2001, the film follows the heartbreaking attempts of a six-year-old girl to take herself to school. The tenacious and cute Bakhtay's desire, in the absence of her mother, is not easily attained. And her allegorical travails, as she struggles first to find the money to buy a schoolbook, then to get past the barrier of boys "playing" Taliban in the desert – a game that includes putting a hood over the girl's head, threatening to stone her, and digging her grave – speaks volumes about the plight of women in her country.