The Other Side of Tomorrow, Graphic Novel

In 2013, life was hopeless in North Korean. It is even worse now. Starvation and oppression are just as omnipresent, but now draftees are essentially being sold as cannon-fodder for Putin’s imperial dreams. That is not the life Yunho’s mother (or Omma) wants for him. However, to escape, they must risk grave peril in Tina Cho’s graphic novel, The Other Side of Tomorrow, illustrated by Deb JJ Lee, which is now on-sale.

Somehow, Yunho’s mother “escaped” across the border to China, where she secretly works to raise money for her full escape with Yunho. He still lives with his grandmother (halmoni), but Yunho was forced to drop out of school, so he could scavenge for scrap metal fulltime to survive. In contrast, Myunghee lives entirely on her own, having lost all her family to starvation and the regime’s cruelty. Yet, the fates of the two North Korean children soon intertwine.

First, the cool-headed Myunghee saves Yunho from possibly betraying himself when the army sweeps them up amid a large crowd to witness the public execution of his Uncle Samchon. Fatefully. Yunho’s uncle had already arranged his passage across the river to China, where his Omma awaits. Myunghee also paid her way that far, using the last of her food.

Ominously, Myungheesoon finds herself sold into bondage to an elderly farming couple. However, when she makes her next “escape,” she comes face-to-face with Yunho, who reunited with his Omma. As the Korean Evangelical underground railroad plans the next leg of their journey, Omma temporarily “adopts” Myunghee. It will help Yunho to have someone to help care for his mother when she gets sick during the arduous trek. However, he also jealously resents Myunghee trying to share Omma’s affections.

If you saw the extraordinary documentary Beyond Utopia, you will understand the flight from North Korea is not simply one escape, but a series of dangerous escapes: first from the DPRK to the PRC, then from China to Laos, and finally to the reasonably safe Thailand, where the South Korean and American embassies offer asylum.

Cho captures the grueling nature of each leg. She also explicitly establishes the Evangelical Christian character of the rescuer network. Although the freedom seekers deal with a few mercenary traffickers, they are mostly helped by Christian volunteers, who risk their own lives and freedom to save North Korean defectors.

Cho vividly humanizes and personalizes their plight. Myunghee and Yunho are fully realized young characters, with believably messy pre-teen emotions. Adults will understand and forgive them, while the target 8-12 year-old audience will readily identify with them. As a result, Other Side of Tomorrow functions as an excellent introduction to North Korea and the general idea of repressive regimes to younger readers. Hopefully, someone can convince Marco Rubio to give Trump a copy.

SEAL Team: Trust, But Verify Pt. 1 & 2

Considering how hard it is for SEAL Team Bravo to smuggle a defector out of North Korea, just imagine how difficult it must be for Pastor Kim Seungeun, the real-life protagonist of Beyond Utopia. Granted, the SEALs stand out more in the DPRK. They are also trying to rescue a scientist who is integral to the regime’s advanced weapons research. Initially, only the first four episodes of SEAL Team’ s fifth season were supposed to air on CBS (including this two-part season premiere), before the franchise transferred to Paramount+, but then the strikes happened. Now, the entire fifth season is part of their new Fall schedule. It is refreshing to see actual bad guys cast as TV bad guys, including the North Koreans in “Trust, but Verify,” which returns to free TV this Thursday.

The team has their own stuff to deal with at the start of the season. Chief Warrant Officer Ray Perry has been away, getting treatment for his PTSD, which only Master Chief Jason Hayes knows, at least so far. Hayes is still trying to shrug off the lingering effects of a serious head injury that might be more severe than he wants to admit. Special Operator Clay Spenser is finally planning his long-deferred honeymoon, while Special Operator Sonny Quinn is spending time with his newborn. Unfortunately, they must put everything on hold for a “training mission” with the South Koreans.

Of course, it turns out the “training” is just a cover. Instead, they will infiltrate North Korea and exfiltrate Dr. Jin, a high-ranking scientist, whiose wife already defected. Their contact is Kwan Jon-wi, a rescuer, who is much closer to Pastor Kim than the dodgy broker-traffickers he is forced to work with.

Although the two-parter does not reflect the full extent of the DPRK’s extreme dystopian oppression, it still acknowledges the prison-like conditions and constant paranoia of life in the North. Most of the action comes in part 2, which is nicely executed, especially by network TV standards. Keong Sim also has a memorable guest-appearance as the somewhat traumatized Jin.

DOC NYC ’21: The Mole

If any film could never conceivably have a sequel, Mads Brügger’s The Red Chapel would be it. For starters, Brügger is now banned from entering North Korea after he engineered an embarrassing punking of the regime. However, it inspired Ulrich Larsen, an average Danish fellow, who hatched a scheme to infiltrate the DPRK regime. Naturally, he reached out to Brügger, who documented his real-life espionage in The Mole, which screens as part of this year’s DOC NYC.

In retrospect, Larsen’s plan was simple but sound. He just started attending meetings of Denmark’s North Korean friendship association, making himself helpful. Like the US Communist Party during the Cold War, the higher-ups closely collaborate with the DPRK government. Like a cult, the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) looks for insecure underachievers who can find a sense of purpose serving the royal Kim dynasty.

Enter Alejandro Cao de Benos, the President of the KFA, who takes Larsen under his wing. Eventually, the Spanish government bars him from leaving the country, but he maintains his position of influence within the DPRK regime. He challenges Larsen to reel in a big investor, so Brügger recruits “Mr. James,” a former foreign legionnaire and coke dealer, who became a legit but highly adventurous businessman. Over the course of several years, they travel to North Korea, Cambodia, Uganda, and tellingly Beijing, for a blockbuster deal to produce high-grade missiles and meth in Africa that would also deliver arms to the Syrian regime and import oil into the DPRK, circumventing international sanctions.

Brügger’s expose is absolutely mind-blowing and chilling as heck. While there was “no smoking gun” in Red Chapel, Larsen and Mr. James uncover absolutely damning evidence of official DPRK state criminality, including a literal price list for armaments like SCUD missiles. It is also a genuine white-knuckle thriller, because the tension grows exponentially as the two Moles penetrate deeper into North Korea’s web of intrigue.

Playing Frisbee in North Korea

One of the pleasures of traveling is the experience of exploring new cities and countries on your own and maybe even getting a little lost. That opportunity is not available in North Korea. Those who participate in state-run tours have to get on the bus and stay on the damn bus. Taking pictures out the windows is not an option either. As a result, filmmaker Savanna Washington was strictly limited in what she could film, even surreptitiously, but at least she was always aware her minders were minding her (and telling the regime’s propaganda lies) during the trip she documents in Playing Frisbee in North Korea, which releases today on DVD.

Washington understood she might be one of the first African Americans many of the North Korean locals had ever seen. Unfortunately, she would have relatively few chances to meet them, outside of scripted tour events. The minder/guides kept a tight rein on her group, while average North Koreans were too busy with the constant struggle of simply staying alive.

It is unclear what the other “tourists” were expecting from their DPRK experience, since they are only briefly seen in the margins of Washington’s field of vision. However, she states they were all eventually exhausted by the minders’ tight control. To her credit, Washington intersperses her tour footage with expert commentary and the testimony of defectors. They clearly establish the magnitude of the famines and the severity of the Yodok prison/concentration camps. They also conclusively dispel any misplaced faith in the standards of “free” medical care offered by Communist regimes. However, several talking heads also advocate for continued and increased humanitarian food aid, due to the dire living conditions endured by average North Korean.

Back to School: The Loyalist (short)

As more countries belatedly adopt Magnitsky-style sanctions, the question will start to arise regarding how the families of serial human rights abusers should be treated. They might technically be innocent of their parents’ crimes, but they still stood to benefit from their corruption. In most cases, they knew well enough. However, it is not clear just how well a North Korean music student studying in Switzerland understands her father and the regime he serves. He has come to test her loyalty and perhaps vice versa in Minji Kang’s short film, The Loyalist, which is available on Omeleto, as a potential supplement to that curriculum on North Korea you’re whipping up for your kids (like the NY Board of Ed would do it for you).

For years, Gen. Roh’s daughter Shilla has studied at a Swiss boarding school, where her angelic voice has garnered praise and encouragement. Frankly, it might be too angelic, since she has often been featured as a soloist in chorale performances of “Ave Maria.” Being nestled away in Freiburg has protected her from the insanity of her homeland, but it has also raised suspicions. The doctrinaire officer has come to verify she hasn’t shaken off her brainwashing and started to question the Kim dynastic regime and its Communist ideology. Rather awkwardly, she plans to ask permission to follow her musical dreams, no matter where that might take her. Obviously, something or someone will have to give here.

You might want to watch Loyalist before you program it for your teens and pre-teens, because there is a brief but shocking incident of violence. If you are not trying to shelter them from such imagery (rather excessively in our view), the film raises a host of important themes for discussion, first and foremost being the nature of totalitarian regimes. It helps personalize the dehumanizing demands made by collective ideologies for individual sacrifice, through the eyes of a teenaged character most kids should identify with.

Sundance ’20: Assassins

It is the stuff of a Hitchcock thriller, but Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong have probably never heard of Hitchcock and they certainly never heard of the man they were tricked into killing. Kim Jong-nam happened to be the older brother of Kim Jong-un, who had expressed guarded skepticism of the Kim dynastic regime. That made him a threat that Kim intended to remove. Tragically, his agents duped Aisyah and Huong into committing the crime and then left them to face the music. Ryan White chronicles the attack and subsequent trial step-by-step, with the close cooperation of their defense teams, in the Kafkaesque documentary expose Assassins, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Aisyah is Indonesian and Huong is Vietnamese, but both came from mean circumstances. However, they were young, attractive, a very connected on social media. The latter is important, because it left a trail for the defense teams to follow later. In 2017, Kim Jong-un was ruthlessly purging anyone who could be a potential rival. Naturally, his estranged older brother was at the top of the list, but he was a difficult target, because China had granted him sanctuary (most likely to gain leverage over Prince Jong-un). That meant any assassination would have to take place outside China.

Prince Kim’s agents hatched an evil plan, recruiting Aisyah and Huong to ostensibly perform in prank video, in which they surprised unsuspecting targets by accosting them from behind and rubbing baby lotion on their faces. They filmed nearly a dozen dry runs, establishing the legitimacy of the videos with the naïve young women, but when it was time to punk Kim Jong-un in the Kuala Lumpur airport, they were lathered up with VX nerve agent instead. Of course, their North Korean masterminds immediately fled the country, setting their dupes up to take the fall. Frustratingly, the Malaysian legal system was happy to oblige, focusing their wrath on the women, instead of the North Korean government, or Air Koryo, which helped facilitate the agents’ escape.

These are the bare facts, which really only the Malaysian prosecutors disputed (seriously, how would the economically disadvantaged Aisyah and Huong acquire a sophisticated weapon like VX?). We watch the defense attorneys methodically build their counter-narratives and hear from the women themselves via phone interviews from prison. White’s talking heads also provide some eye-opening context on the royal Kim regime. It is not the primary focus of the film, but it is still valuable analysis.

Once again, the global community has allowed a repressive regime to violate international law and every standard of decency, without facing any consequences. The Malaysian government simply tried to railroad Aisyah and Huong, declining to take any action against the DPRK. (Even if they wanted to avoid a diplomatic kerfuffle, they could still sanction Air Koryo—and so should the rest of the free world).

This is a riveting film that establishes beyond any possible doubt the ruthlessness of the Kim regime, as well as their culpability (the Malaysian justice system does not come out looking very enlightened either). White’s telling of the tale maximizes the suspense for those who do not know the beat-by-beat history of the trial, without indulging in sensationalism. It is scary stuff that should serve as a bracing wake-up call. Very highly recommended, Assassins screens again this afternoon (1/28) and Saturday (2/1) in Park City and Thursday (1/30) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance.

Take Point: Action Under the DMZ

You know things are bad in the DPRK if the Grand Poobah himself wants to defect. In this thriller set three or four years in the future, the “Supreme Leader” is aptly known as “King.” Whether he really wants to defect or not is uncertain, but “Ahab,” a South Korean mercenary, is determined to bring him back safely regardless. It will take a bold move to prevent a catastrophic war and Ahab is just the guy to make it in Kim Byung-woo’s Take Point (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles and next Friday in New York.

Ahab and his seedy team of mercs are lethally effective, but as foreign nationals, they can be easily disavowed. That is why Agent Mackenzie frequently subcontracts their services. However, this gig was always going to messy and it just got a whole lot more complicated. Ahab’s crew ensconced themselves in the secret tunnels under the DMZ, waiting to whisk away a high-ranking official who supposedly wants to defect. The game gets exponentially more serious when King shows up in his place. Maybe he wants to defect or maybe he doesn’t. Either way, Ahab and his men can collect the enormous bounty on King’s head if they bring him in alive.

The initial snatch and grab proceeds surprisingly smoothly, but everything soon goes down twisted thereafter. It seems Ahab and King were set up by elements in the North Korean government loyal to China, who want to take over the DPRK and embarrass the American government, especially Pres. McGregor, whose re-election numbers have been in freefall. He might end up hoisted on his own Wag-the-Dog petard, unless Ahab and his crew can deliver the wounded King to the rendezvous point. Things look really bad for the colorful mercs, but Ahab finds an unlikely ally in Yoon Ji-ui, King’s personal physician.

Politically speaking, Take Point (the title is a command and also maybe a place) is about as cynical as a film can get. Everyone is betraying everyone else, so you can’t accuse it of playing favorites, but it is safe to say there is some serious moral equivalency going on here. At least there is also some slam bang action as well. Kim really puts poor Ahab through the wringer and paints him into a corner. His prosthetic leg takes more of a beating than the one the Rock sports in Skyscraper.

As Ahab, Ha Jung-woo is a terrific world-weary, beat-to-heck anti-hero. It is also a good deal of fun watching him play off American thesps Jennifer Ehle and Malik Yoba, as Mackenzie and Gerald, Ahab’s field lieutenant. Of course, it is obvious Ahab’s righthand man Markus is questionable, because he is played by Kevin Durand at his shiftiest.

Scurrying through all those underground tunnels could potentially get tedious, but Kim keeps the energy cranked out and the close-quarters combat easy to follow. You have to give him and the stunt team credit, because they keep raising the stakes and topping themselves, every step of the way. Recommended for the action spectacle (rather than as any sort of coherent political statement), Take Point opens tomorrow (1/27) at the CGV Theatres in LA and Buena Park and next Friday (1/4) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

HIFF ’18: Little Pyongyang (short)

New Malden is part of a London swing district that has periodically changed hands from the Conservatives to the Liberal Dems (but interestingly, Labour has not been in the mix). It also happens to be home to approximately 600 freedom-seeking North Korean immigrants, making it the largest concentration of North Koreans outside of the Korean Peninsula. Joong-wha Choi is a leader of their small community and an outspoken human rights advocate. Frankly, we fear for his safety, given the methods employed by the Kim Dynasty for dealing with its detractors, but the better-known he becomes, the harder it will be for him to disappear. Yet, Choi seems untroubled by these concerns. Instead, he is plagued by persistent survivor’s guilt, as he explains in plain-spoken terms throughout Roxy Rezvany’s intimate short documentary, Little Pyongyang, which screens during the 2018 Hawaii International Film Festival.

There are about six hundred people who can truly appreciate how Choi feels, but his children are not part of that sub-set. He tries to explain how bad things were, but they just do not get it. Choi misses many things from his homeland, but conditions got so dire in the 1990s, he had no choice but to leave. A few years later, he was reunited with his mother for a matter of months, but that maybe made their ultimate parting even harder. Not surprisingly, Choi’s emotions are mixed regarding his new suburban London home, but he remains unflaggingly critical of the appalling living conditions and utter lack of individual freedom in his native North Korea.

Choi does not just talk the talk—but merely speaking out against a petulant tyrant like Kim Jong-un takes guts. However, he also volunteers a great deal of his time to help new arrivals from North Korea acclimate to life in England. Honestly, it is tough to watch Choi beat himself up, because he is clearly a good man.

This is also a very good film. It is part of a batch of short docs presented under the banner of The Guardian newspaper, but it stands head-and-shoulders above the rest of the field. That almost sounds like a case of damning with faint praise, but it is important to understand Rezvany’s film is deeply humanistic, displaying none of the extremism viewers would expect from the Guardian imprimatur. It is also boasts some unusually well-crafted visuals for a short doc, which is a nice added bonus.

Frankly, Little Pyongyang will make viewers want to get involved (Liberty in North Korea is a good resource to start with), which was probably one of the main goals. Very highly recommended, Little Pyongyang screens this Friday (11/9), as part of the Mind the Gap shorts program at this year’s HIFF.

Liberation Day: Back in the DPRK

During the early 1980s, the very name of the Slovenian industrial metal-avant-garde band Laibach was declared illegal by the Communist government. (It happened to be the German name of Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital.) You would therefore expect they would be the last rock band that would agree to perform in North Korea, one of the last remaining Communist regimes. Yet, they signed on for the unlikely gig, presumably because they appreciated both the irony and the potential publicity. As if Pyongyang were not surreal enough, the band infamous for their “satirical” crypto-fascist stylings came to rock the house, but satisfying the censors would be quite the adventure, duly documented in Ugis Olte & Morten Traavik’s Liberation Day (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York.

Perhaps, you are thinking: “wait, haven’t I heard this joke before?” Yes, Mads Brügger and his co-conspirators made the North Korean censors squirm with their proposed good will variety show,documented in Red Chapel. The difference is Laibach and show producer-co-director Traavik really wanted to stage a serious concert—so much so, they were willing to make numerous concessions to the censors and their minders.

Of course, reality frequently crashes their party, starting from day one, when a high-ranking apparatchik basically calls them fascist pigs at their welcoming banquet. They should have said takes one to know one, but instead Traavik claims the band is constantly misrepresented in the media, just like the peace-loving state of North Korea, so they therefore share a kinship.

The extent to which the band is willing to compromise their artistic integrity for the sake of the concert is frankly disappointing. Seriously, you guys used to give Tito the finger. Show some nihilistic contempt for authority. Frontline estimates one out of every one hundred North Koreans is a political prisoner and entire families--two generations in each direction--routinely condemned to concentration camps for one member's thought crimes. Yet, Laibach obediently minds their minders ignores this reality. That's not iconoclasm, its servility.

Still, you have to gawk at some of the spectacle, including Laibach performing their satanic-sounding Sound of Music covers, with the full approval of the censorship bureau. Apparently, the Julie Andrews movie is a staple of North Korean television, but good luck collecting those residuals.

There are some mind-blowing moments in Liberation that remind us how weird our world truly is. However, the absence of a Brügger-like figure and his constant ironic commentary and reality checks is keenly felt. Brügger took his crew to North Korea to subvert the totalitarian regime, whereas Traavik set out to capitalize off it. Big difference. Check out Red Chapel before you even think of watching Liberation (it streams on Amazon Prime). There is plenty of weird sights to behold, but ultimately Liberation Day is disappointingly well-behaved when it opens this Wednesday (10/18) in New York, at Film Forum.

NYAFF ’17: Mrs. B., a North Korean Woman

The sad truth is many refugees fleeing North Korean are sold into marriage with provincial Chinese men. The sadder truth is this is still usually an improvement in their lives. “Mrs. B.” would know better than anyone. After being sold by her traffickers, she became a trafficker herself. Her life has been grossly complicated by geopolitical factors outside her control, but she will still have to live with the consequences of her decisions in Jero Yun’s guerrilla-style documentary Mrs. B., a North Korean Woman (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Now fluent in Mandarin, Mrs. B. tries to pass for Sino-Korean. As traffickers go, she is one of the better ones out there. Obviously, she has empathy for her customers, some of whom have also been family. Using her network, Mrs. B. smuggled out her two teen sons and her first Korean husband. Somewhat to her own surprise, she now prefers her Chinese husband Jin, but she still misses her sons now residing in Seoul.

Once again, the trafficker becomes the trafficked, when Mrs. B. sets off on the arduous refugee route through China and Southeast Asia. The plan is for the fully-documented Jin to join her once she has established her defector status. However, things get rather more complicated once she arrives. Much to her regret, Mrs. B. finds she and her family are under suspicious of espionage and/or drug trafficking, which in fact she admits to some involvement with respects to the latter.

Mrs. B.’s life and circumstances are acutely dramatic, but they are maybe not as damning an indictment of South Korea’s Cold War mentality as Yun presents them to be. For the sake of survival, Mrs. B. has definitely cut ethical corners and embraced the grey areas of extralegal commerce—judging solely from what she is willing to cop to on camera. Frankly, she probably should be getting close scrutiny from the ROK intelligence service. On the other hand, her Korean first husband is such a broken man, it is hard to believe he could be any use to the North Korean terror apparatus.

To a far greater extent than his pleasantly humanistic short film Hitchhiker, Yun clearly advocates a détente in the Korean Cold War, presumably as a first step towards unification. However, his moral equivalency posited between the rigorous security vigilance of the South and the total state control of citizen’s lives in the North simply does not hold water. After all, the Kim Jong-un regime recently assassinated his half-brother Kim Jong-nam in the Malaysian airport, during broad daylight. Nothing is beyond the pale for the DPRK, so a little paranoia on the part of the South isn’t merely understandable. It’s probably necessary.

That leaves us with an intimate portrait of the fascinating, but flawed Mrs. B. It is very much a story of a divided Korea, but it does not have the wider implications of other defectors’ harrowing but more representative experiences, such as those of Yeonmi Park and Eunsun Kim. Narrowly recommended as an ironic human-interest story, Mrs. B., a North Korean Woman screens this coming Monday (7/3), at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2017 NYAFF.

Under the Sun: North Korea Exposed by its Own Propaganda

Lee Zin-mi really is a sweet little girl, but that is about the only true thing about the propaganda film she was supposed to star in. Russian filmmaker Vitaly Mansky was supposed to make it, because he would have given it international credibility. However, unlike other disgracefully compliant filmmakers allowed inside the notoriously closed state, he quickly and repeatedly clashed with his minders. Mansky duly followed the ground-rules requiring him to allow the authorities to review his footage each night, but digital is a subversive format. Unbeknownst to them, Mansky’s camera was not simply recording between “action” and “cut.” He also captured the minders as they staged the phony propaganda. Viewers get a rare chance to peak behind the curtain of DPRK rhetoric to see the enforcers threatening little girls to look “joyous” or else in Mansky’s Under the Sun (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York.

Wherever little Lee goes, there is always someone there to lecture her (and us) on the glories of the Kim Royal Dynasty. As she prepares for her initiation into the Children’s Union, her family will live in a fake apartment (nice, but not spectacular by most nations’ standards) and actually eat regular meals. Her father starts the film as a journalist, but he then becomes the engineer at a garment factory. We get to see him celebrate with the joyful workers when their latest productivity results are announced, but with each successive take, the minders keep increasing their quota-busting percentages.

Under the Sun starts slow, allowing us to get to know Lee and her family. However, when Mansky and editor Andrej Paperny let the first apparatchik peak into the frame, the film takes a seriously sinister turn. We then watch as Lee’s pageant dance instructor reduces her to tears. Of course, the command to “look happy” always remains in full force.

Even when they are faking it, everyone looks miserable in North Korea. This is especially true of the everyday crowd footage Mansky presumably captured surreptitiously. Yet, what really makes the film sting are the moments when we see how much pressure young Lee is under. She is just a kid. She shouldn’t have the full weight of the Kim family dictatorship weighing down on her. However, if Mansky had ignored this terrible reality, it would only make matters worse.

Needless to say, Under the Sun has provoked outrage from North Korean authorities, as well as Putin’s Ministry of Culture, which thought it was co-financing a very different film. Perhaps most disappointing was the revelation a MoMA curator axed Under the Sun from this year’s Documentary Fortnight, for fear of offending North Korea. That led to a mini-firestorm and her apparent dismissal. If that is indeed how things went down, MoMA deserves credit. For too long and too often, submitting to censorship demands at the expense of our freedoms has been seen as the safe choice. At least in this case, there were professional costs for betraying the values of free expression all film curators should necessarily share.

Be that as it may, Under the Sun is a fascinating film, but it could have used Mansky’s voice to more fully explain what was happening just outside our field of vision. We can see enough to fully understand the gist of the situation, but there must have been even greater lunacy they tried to hide from the mostly Russian crew. Still, there is an unvarnished, un-spun integrity to the film as it is.

The world cinema community has a dual responsibility in this case. We should all see Under the Sun and take stock of the ways Mansky circumvented his minders. (Australian filmmaker Anna Broinowski should hang her head in shame, because Under the Sun truly exposes how cravenly subservient she was while making the gutless puff piece, Aim High in Creation.) Going forward, the international film world also should do its best to keep tabs on Lee and her family. The regime should be made to understand if anything happens to the Lees, it will reflect disgrace on them. Very highly recommended, Under the Sun opens this Wednesday (7/6) in New York, at Film Forum.

Sundance ’16: The Lovers and the Despot

Shin Sang-ok produced the 3 Ninjas franchise in Hollywood and some of Kim Jong-il’s most ambitious propaganda films. Like his ex-wife, actress Choi Eun-hee, Shin had to live with many decisions that were outside his control. Kidnapped by the North Korean Communist regime, Shin and Choi renewed their romance as they bided their time, waiting for an opportunity to escape. Their absolutely incredible story is chronicled in Rob Cannan & Ross Adam’s documentary, The Lovers and the Despot, which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, Shin and Choi were the power couple of South Korean prestige cinema. They were the toast of the international festival circuit and popular at home. Unfortunately, Shin was a poor businessman and a flawed husband. At a time when his production company was drowning in red ink, Shin started an affair with a younger actress. After giving him the boot, Choi left for Hong Kong to explore a lucrative movie offer. Unfortunately, it was a set-up to facilitate her abduction, on Kim Jong-il’s orders. Hoping to find his alarmed son and daughter’s missing mother, Shin followed her trail in Hong Kong, exactly as the North Koreans hoped.

Kim hoped to “convince” Choi and Shin to elevate clunky DPRK movie-making into the equal of the vastly superior South Korean film industry they knew so well. Bizarrely, it took Kim five years to implement his plan. In the interim, Shin was held in a prison camp, while Kim essentially kept Choi on display, like an orchid in his private greenhouse. Of course, when he finally asked, they duly agreed, because what choice did they have.

Yet, Shin and Choi were always reluctant participants in Kim’s productions. Hoping to escape one day, they secretly recorded exculpatory conversations with the exalted royal dictator. Rather incredibly, their micro-cassettes represent some of the only recordings of Kim II’s voice. Eventually, they would be vindicated, but for years, South Koreans assumed they had sold out to the North.

This is one of the most remarkable stranger-than-fiction episodes of the Twentieth Century. It has more suspense and intrigue than the collected George Smiley series, but it is also an incredible love story. Cannan & Adam have a particular affinity for the romantic aspect of the tale, as does Choi herself, whose frequent presence enriches the film tremendously.

Lovers also happens to be a super-well put together documentary, shoehorning in plenty of historical context and conveying a colorful sense of the titular lovers’ films, without slowing the pace or interrupting the narrative flow. Just when you think it can’t get any weirder, Choi reveals another twist. It is a truly fascinating story that will leave viewers eager for a comprehensive retrospective of their work (including Shin’s Pulgasari, North Korea’s first kaiju movie). Very highly recommended, The Lovers and the Despot screens again this Tuesday (1/26) in Salt Lake, and Thursday (1/28) and Friday (1/29) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Not Screening in Villeurbanne: The Reflection of Power (short)

Festival submissions are just as competitive for short films as they are for features, but shorts always get the short end of the stick from the press (if that). Nonetheless, it is great thrill to be selected by a prestigious short film festival. Although it cannot remotely compare to the suffering of the victims killed and injured by rampaging Islamist terrorists in Paris, selected filmmakers must be disappointed screenings at the 2015 Festival du Film Court de Villeurbanne were understandably suspended this weekend, in accordance with the decree of national mourning.

Ironically, one of the films that would have screened today somehow manages to make the North Korean capital of Pyongyang look even more surreal. The Kim Dynasty personality cult produces the strangest form of denial in Romanian-born Mihai Grecu’s The Reflection of Power (trailer here), which will hopefully still screen this Wednesday (11/18) in Villeurbanne.

The streets of Pyongyang are empty, because nearly everyone is attending the mandated propaganda pageant. That much is not unusual, but on this day, the city of imposing architecture and kitschy monuments is flooding. Water is rising to Biblical levels, but the assembly carries on. Those performing support functions ignore the water at their ankles. If the Feared Leader has not acknowledged the flood, neither will they.

Visually, Reflection is an eye-popper. This is one of the few shorts films that is worthy of IMAX treatment. Grecu and his effects team do incredible work first recreating the notoriously isolated city and then convincingly deluging it.

Just how we should take the steady flooding is open to interpretation, but it is hard to imagine Reflection getting a command invitation from the Kim regime anytime soon. The images of a city ignoring its peril may not be perfectly suited for French audiences right now, but its artistry is impressive and its implied criticism of ideological extremism still might find receptive audiences. Of course, the fact it is not screening today is a fractional part of an enormous human tragedy.

Everything scheduled at the Villeurbanne festival deserves the chance to be seen and the Eagles of Death Metal deserve the chance to be heard. Some say this is a wake-up call, but those who slept through September 11^th, Mumbai 2008, and the Charlie Hebdoo attacks are not likely to wake up the reality of terrorism now. Regardless, we offer our sympathy to the people of Paris and hope our respective leaders learn from these horrific events.