90 Seconds in North Korea

Verliebt, verlobt, verloren

June 2015 •German

Liberation Day

October 2016 •English

Under the loving but firm guidance of an old fan turned director and cultural diplomat, and to the surprise of a whole world, the ex-Yugoslavian cult band Laibach becomes the first rock group ever to perform in the fortress state of North Korea.

Kim Jong-un: The Unauthorized Biography

September 2015 •French

A journey through several countries to find those who really know Kim Jong-un, North Korea's leader, in an attempt to profile a contradictory dictator who seems to rule his nation with both disturbing benevolence and cold cruelty while being worshipped as a living god by his subjects in exalted displays of ridiculous fanaticism.

War of Art

March 2019 •English

What happens when a group of international artists travel to North Korea to create art like the regime have never seen before? While the world is on the verge of nuclear war, a group of Western contemporary artists are invited into the eye of the storm. The aim is to collaborate with North Korean artists in a creative exchange project displaying new and challenging art in a country where abstract art is forbidden.

Ryeohaeng

August 2019 •Korean

A group of women climbs a summer mountain situated in South Korea. They are refugees who have settled into South Korean society after fleeing from North Korea. For them, climbing the mountains has been an unavoidable journey for survival - a matter of life and death.

Inside North Korea

March 2006 •English

Join National Geographic's Lisa Ling as she captures a rare look inside North Korea - something few Americans have ever been able to do. Posing as an undercover medical coordinator and closely guarded throughout her trip, Lisa moves inside the most isolated nation in the world, encountering a society completely dominated by government and dictatorship. Glimpse life inside North Korea as you've never seen before with personal accounts and powerful footage. Witness first-hand efforts by humanitarians and the challenges they face from the rogue regime.

North Korea: A Day in the Life

January 2004 •Dutch

If the cityscapes and patriotic anthems of this film seem a far cry from the bleak landscape of Seoul Train, that's no accident. Dutch filmmaker Pieter Fleury, with the full permission and cooperation of the North Korean government, created this propaganda film that gives us a glimpse of a day in the life of one of the world's most enigmatic societies. A Day in the Life, largely dictated by the North Korean film bureau, follows a typical North Korean family through their daily duties, largely dedicated to the pride in the North Korean nation of comrades and the glory of General Kim Jong Il. The film is meant to extol the success of modern North Korea. But does it? With straight footage and a total absence of narration, viewers may interpret Fleury's film in a slightly different manner than intended

Napalm

September 2017 •French

Napalm is the story of the breathtaking and brief encounter, in 1958, between a French member of the first Western European delegation officially invited to North Korea after the devastating Korean war and a nurse working for the Korean Red Cross hospital, in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Maneuvers in the Dark

March 2012 •English

Maneuvers in the Dark is the story of how three young Swedish entrepreneurs manage to sneak through the backdoor of North Korea in an attempt to produce jeans in the country, and of the spiraling repercussions that follow as they begin to trade with the worlds most sealed dictatorship.

A Postcard from Pyongyang

September 2019 •German

"A Postcard from Pyongyang" is a journey into a deeply enigmatic and completely isolated country that keeps the world in suspense: North Korea. Friends Gregor Möller, Philip Kist and Anne Lewald visit in 2013 and 2017 and do what is strictly forbidden and for which they might have ended up in a forced labor camp: even though accompanied by state watchers, they secretly film their travels, accompanied by state watchdogs. We get an extraordinary insight into one of the most closed societies in the world and experience the 'beautiful new world' as the state propaganda machinery displays it.

Project Cheonan Ship

September 2013 •Korean

Interpreting an event of ROKS Cheonan corvette, torpedoed and sunken by North Korea, this documentary rebuilds the event with a different insight. No one can tell if the investigation of Cheonan has reached compelling conclusion. But the film tells and reveals how unreasonable Korean society is.

Assassins

August 2021 •English

True crime meets global spy thriller in this gripping account of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of the North Korean leader. The film follows the trial of the two female assassins, probing the question: were the women trained killers or innocent pawns of North Korea?

The VICE Guide to North Korea

July 2008 •English

Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with. They finally said, “OK, OK, you can come. But only as tourists.” At the airport, the North Korean consulate brought us to a restaurant and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs. We were thinking, “Look, we were just on a plane for 20 hours. Can we just go to bed?” but this guy with our group who was from the LA Times told us, “Everyone in here besides us is secret police. If you don’t act excited then you’re not going to get your visa. So we got drunk and jumped up onstage and sang songs with the girls. The next day we got our visas. A lot of people we had gone with didn’t get theirs. That was our first hint at just what a freaky, freaky trip we were embarking on…

The Haircut

April 2017 •English

The isolated, hermit kingdom of the DPRK is shrouded in secrecy, It's nearly impossible to get any reliable information from behind the bamboo curtain. Nonetheless, every week, on T.V. and online, we are bombarded by the bizarre media-spectacle of North Korea. From nuclear apocalypse and prison camps to banned sarcasm and compulsory identical haircuts - any shred of information regarding North Korea becomes a viral media hit, regardless of how dubious the story is. But that's all about to change. Two Aussie boys decided to take matters into their own hands and go to North Korea to find out the truth for themselves. Join us as we look past the click-bait and unpack the forces behind the way our media represents the "Democratic People's Republic of North Korea".

North Korea's Deadly Dictator

September 2017 •English

The assassination of Kim Jong-nam occurred on 13 February 2017 when two women attacked him with VX nerve agent, a lethal chemical weapon, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. Kim was the eldest son of deceased North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and the half-brother of current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. North Korean diplomats objected to any form of autopsy being conducted on Kim's body, but the autopsy proceeded as the they did not submit a formal protest. Following Malaysia's refusal to release the body immediately, North Korea's ambassador Kang Chol accused Malaysia of collaborating with the country's enemies over the assassination of Kim Jong-nam.

North Korea: The Parade

May 1989 •Polish

Defilada was made on the occasion of the 40th anniversary celebrations of state's founding in North Korea, which the regime intended to use to eclipse the 1988 Summer Olympics taking place that year in Seoul, South Korea. The North Korean regime invited filmmakers from countries then considered friendly (read: Communist), including People's Republic of Poland, which sent a team under Andrzej Fidyk. The documentary is primarily composed of declarative statements, as well as texts of North Korean newspapers and books. There was no author's commentary. Fidyk commented that he and his team were likely “the most disciplined” foreign team of filmmakers in North Korea, as they did not trouble the regime by looking under the surface - they were content with what they were given and asked to do. (Wikipedia)

Dear Pyongyang

January 2006 •Japanese

Dear Pyongyang is a documentary film by Zainichi Korean director Yang Yong-hi (Korean: 양영희, Hanja: 梁英姬) about her own family. It was shot in Osaka Japan (Yang's hometown) and Pyongyang, North Korea, In the 1970s, Yang's father, an ardent communist and leader of the pro-North movement in Japan, sent his three sons from Japan to North Korea under a repatriation campaign sponsored by ethnic activist organisation and de facto North Korean embassy Chongryon; as the only daughter, Yang herself remained in Japan. However, as the economic situation in the North deteriorated, the brothers became increasingly dependent for survival on the care packages sent by their parents. The film shows Yang's visits to her brothers in Pyongyang, as well as conversations with her father about his ideological faith and his regrets over breaking up his family.

Dennis Rodman's Big Bang in PyongYang

January 2015 •English

Dennis Rodman is on a mission. After forging an unlikely friendship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, he wants to improve relations between North Korea and the US by staging a historic basketball game between the two countries. But the North Korean team isn't the only opposition he'll face... Condemned by the NBA and The Whitehouse, and hounded every step of the way by the press, can Dennis keep it together and make the game happen? Or will it go up in a mushroom cloud of smoke? For the first time, discover the true story of what happened when Dennis Rodman took a team of former-NBA players to North Korea and staged the most controversial game of basketball the world has never seen.

The Fantastic

October 2021 •Korean

In Maija Blåfield’s documentary, eight former North Koreans talk about what it was like to watch illegal films in a closed society. In addition to the 'waste videos', South Korean films were also smuggled into the country via China.

Under the Sun

October 2015 •German

Over the course of one year, this film follows the life of an ordinary Pyongyang family whose daughter was chosen to take part in Day of the Shining Star (Kim Jong-il's birthday) celebration. While North Korean government wanted a propaganda film, the director kept on filming between the scripted scenes. The ritualized explosions of color and joy contrast sharply with pale everyday reality, which is not particularly terrible, but rather quite surreal.