''The Giant Buddhas'' (2005) is a documentary film by Swiss

filmmaker Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...

Christian Frei about the destruction of the

Buddhas of Bamyan The Buddhas of Bamiyan (or Bamyan) were two 6th-century monumental statues carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley of Hazarajat region in central Afghanistan, northwest of Kabul at an elevation of . Carbon dating of the structural ...

in Afghanistan. The film premiered in August 2005 and was released in March 2006. The movie quotes local Afghans that the destruction was ordered by Osama bin Laden and that initially,

Mullah Omar Mullah Muhammad Omar (; –April 2013) was an Afghan Islamic revolutionary who founded the Taliban and served as the supreme leader of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Born into a religious family of Kandahar, Omar was educated at local '' ma ...

and the Afghans in Bamyan had opposed the destruction.

Awards and nominations

* DOK Leipzig 2005: Silver Dove * Dokufest Prizren 2006: first prize ex aequo *

Trento Film Festival Trento ( or ; Ladin and lmo, Trent; german: Trient ; cim, Tria; , ), also anglicized as Trent, is a city on the Adige River in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol in Italy. It is the capital of the autonomous province of Trento. In the 16th centur ...

2006: Silver Gentian * Tahoe/Reno International Film Festival 2006: Best of the Fest - Documentary * Sundance Film Festival 2006: nominated for a Grand Jury Prize for World cinema-documentaries * Swiss Film Prize 2006: nominated for the Swiss Film Prize for Best Documentary *

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...

2005: Official Selection

References

External links

"The Giant Buddhas" trilingual site (English, Deutsch, Français)
* 2005 films Swiss documentary films Buddhist media Islam-related controversies in Asia 2005 documentary films Films directed by Christian Frei Documentary films about jihadism Documentary films about Afghanistan Documentary films about Buddhism {{Switzerland-film-stub