I had no idea a tale so inherently sad and tragic could be told so charmingly. This powerful look into the lives of children in the Afghani city of Bamian — where towering Fifth Century Buddha statues were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 — is carried by the film's young star, Nikbakht Noruz.

Playing five-year-old Baktay, the protagonist of the film, this tiny actress captures your soul and interest right from the beginning.

Baktay, after being annoyed by the droning homework recitations of a boy from a neighbouring cave — yes, cave! — while she is left at home in charge of the baby, decides that she too wants to go to school to learn "funny stories".

She ties the baby to something in the cave with a rope — yes, she ties the baby up with a rope to the foot — and sets off to fulfil her mission. In male-dominated Afghanistan there seems little good that can from her wide-eyed pluck and determination, however.

Baktay will encounter hurdle after hurdle in her effort to go to school over the course of this 81-minute tale, competing for honours in the Narrative Film Category at BIFF 11.

'Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame' is the second film from Iranian director Hana Makhmalbaf — herself just 19 years old. In this film, the young director demonstrates a sharp and artistic eye.

She gives a chilling view of Baktay's world — made all the more real by the sheer banality the events taking place seem to spur in the reactions of the rare adult characters Baktay encounters.

To start school, Baktay is told with some authority by neighbour boy, she will need a notebook and a pencil. But where does one get a notebook and a pencil in a dirt floor cave in the middle of nowhere?

Baktay sets off to market with some eggs to barter for her notebook — which she eventually manages to secure after some trading advice from the notebook seller. With a notebook and one of her mother's lipsticks to write with, she's off to school.

But first she has to find the girls' school, after a heartbreaking attempt to be allowed to sit in the boys' school, and navigate through a gang of boys intent on playing "Taliban".

Luckily one of the few things that distracts the Taliban boys from their determination to harass and subdue girls — three of whom they capture and place in another cave with bags over their heads — is the pull to fight one another and die for the cause. The boys are filmed collapsing to the ground in grimly realistic fashion after being shot with another's stick gun.

Baktay manages to escape their clutches but will fall prey to them again — and unfortunately her brief stint at the girls' school does not end well either.

Some may find the cold eye the filmmaker takes to these children running amok in a land ravaged by war and ideological madness too obvious, which is a risk of the neo-realist style.

But Miss Makhmalbaf's clinical lens also offers many moments of soft humour and a young heroine too engaging to lose interest in.

You have to root for Baktay and believe her pluck might someday lead her out of the drab life she has been born into in Bamian.

Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame screens tomorrow night at 9.15 p.m. at the BUEI auditorium and on Wednesday at 6.30 p.m. at Liberty Theatre.