Hana Makhmalbaf was only a teenager herself when she directed this remarkable film whose idea was to show a small part of the difficulty that women face under the Taliban in Afghanistan. The beautiful little girl, who is meant to be around 5 or 6 years old, decides she wants to go to school after her neighbour, a cheeky little boy, explains that he learned a joke by going to school. She is determined to go to school and "learn jokes". She is confronted by all manner of difficulties in trying to achieve this ambition, including being confronted by a group of boys who are brutally pretending to be part of the Taliban. Although the little girl faces real danger, she will not give up trying to go to school, and the film is by turns humorous and heartbreaking. It is one of the best films I have ever seen, and richly deserves a much wider audience. The Buddha of the title refers to the 3000 year old statues in Afghanistan, which were summarily destroyed by the Taliban several years ago.