“I hired 30 members of a South Korean Army, special forces unit. (…), we all went to North Korea together, parachuted into Pyongyang, and killed Kim Yong-il. The country was extremely happy.”
This is a dream that Jung Sung San once had. In Yodok Stories, the theatre director recounts his escape from North Korea, a country in which - according to the film- between 200 000 and 300 000 people are locked up in concentration camps. Because it’s nearly impossible to film these atrocities, Sung San directed a musical about them in South Korea in order to inform the public.
Tragic recollections of seven North Korean refugees contribute to the making of this spectacle. Despite the fact that we do not actually see any of the crimes in the camps, we understand their violent nature from the refugees’ descriptions and intermittent footage of the musical. Since they need to be envisaged, their impact and extent may become even more vivid and this can leave you a little dazed. Ultimately, the poignant realization is that this is still happening today.
The only thing that Sung San and the others can do now is get their voices heard and let it be known what is going on in North Korea.
Jessica Hartman
- Brothers and Sisters The Ladies (by Christina (...) [en]
- Eskiköy, Orhan co-director of On the way (...) [en]
- Flying on One Engine Joshua Weinstein [en]
- Geyrhalter, Nikolaus [en]
- Yodok Stories Andrzej Fidyk [en]
- IDFA 2008 (63/89)
- Alba 2009 (80/89)
- Cannes 2009 (89/89)
- Cinéma Vérité (16/89)
- Rio 2009 (52/89)
- Berlinale 2010 (13/89)
- Cannes 2010 (85/89)
- Adana 2010 (12/89)
- Abu Dhabi 2010 (63/89)
- IDFA 2010 (89/89)
- Diagonale 2011 (7/89)
- Cannes 2011 (63/89)
- Venice 2011 (14/89)
- Abu Dhabi 2011 (74/89)
- Black Nights Film Festival 2011 (33/89)
- Jeden Svet Bratislava 2011 (49/89)
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