Synopsis

The Taliban’s deliberate destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in March 2001 caused an international furore. Less well known are the 250 refugee families who fled to Bamiyan’s caves to escape the Taliban’s brutality, hoping to find work in rebuilding the treasures. Over three seasons we follow eight-year old Mir, lively, playful and resilient, making the most of the playground potential of his devastated environment, while his family eke out a bare-bones existence amidst constant worry over the next meal. A sensitive and involving portrait of an Afghanistan reeling from more than two decades of upheaval.

Related Event

Director Phil Grabsky will be present for a discussion following the film.

Full Description

In March 2001 the Taliban blasted to rubble the tallest stone statues in the world. They had been round for sixteen hundred years, but the Taliban, with apparently so much respect for tradition and yet paradoxically with so little respect for history, didn’t just do Afghanistan but also the world a great disservice by destroying them.

But this was merely one of many atrocious acts committed during the Taliban’s reign, and there are stories here that put the magnificent Buddhas in perspective. Filming over the space of a year, running through Summer to Spring, director Phil Grabsky’s film follows the eight year old Mir and his hotchpotch family, wonderfully described by Mir’s half-brother. “Abdul [Mir’s father] came to me and said ‘you’re poor, I’m poor. I’ll give you my only daughter if you give me your mum. Abdul married my mum, and I married Abdul’s daughter.’” Odd enough, but as the film cuts to the mum you realise she can’t be anywhere near as old as she looks if she has an eight year old boy, and when it cuts to the daughter (who has a young baby of her own) she looks like she is barely into her teens.

Grabsky chooses not to make too much of this and why should he when there are so many stories to tell. Against the undeniable beauty of the Bamiyan landscape we hear tales of winter hardship, where children would freeze to death travelling from one part of the country to the mountains as they tried to escape the Taliban. Often the parents would bury their dead children in the snow. But to stay where they were was hardly an option. One person talks about how the Taliban would stab kids to death with knives; another how they would tie people’s hands behind their backs and throw them into holes to be buried. Others had their ears cut off, their eyes gouged out.

Grabsky offers the tragic stories in an astonishingly tranquil environment, and yet one with plenty hardships of its own. Here we see the makeshift family living like many other refugees in a cave amongst the rubble where the Buddhas used to be. In the summer this can make for an almost idyllic life; but when the weather turns the family spends most of its time simply trying to stay warm, and the only thing generating any heat are the hot temperaments, with Abdul telling his son in-law that he shouldn’t be so lazy, and the mother insisting he’s not much of a father.

The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan is interesting barely at all, finally, for what it has to say about the Buddhas – there s no footage of the Buddhas in their former glory- but for what it has to say about personal hardship. The Buddhas at least got to survive sixteen hundred years; in Afghanistan, where life expectancy is in the early forties, the statues had a good innings.

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