Shadow Flowers

The Kidnapped Filmmakers of North Korea

September 2022 •English

In 1978, two South Korean filmmakers--Director Shin Sang-ok and his star actress and ex-wife, Choi Eun-hee--were abducted and smuggled into North Korea in order to revolutionize the country's dying film industry.

Cinema in the Land of Comrade Kim

October 2024 •Persian

The love of Kim Jong Il, the former dictator of North Korea, for cinema and his adventures, including the kidnapping of a director.

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?

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.

The Time of Our Lives

April 2009 •Korean

A documentary that tells the story of Choi Hyun-sook, the first out lesbian parliamentarian candidate in Korea who ran for Jongno-gu in the April 2008 National Assembly election. It's a story about people who dream of a world where minorities are happy, and who, with expectation and aspiration, find the campaign headquarters and made an election with Choi Hyun-sook.

Homes Apart: Korea

January 1991 •Korean

They speak the same language, share a similar culture and once belonged to a single nation. When the Korean War ended in 1953, ten million families were torn apart. By the early 90s, as the rest of the world celebrated the end of the Cold War, Koreans remain separated between North and South, fearing the threat of mutual destruction. Beginning with one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, filmmakers Takagi and Choy reveal the personal, social and political dimensions of one of the last divided nations on earth. The film was also the first US project to get permission to film in both South & North Korea.

The Last of the Sea Women

September 2024 •English

On the shores of Jeju Island, a fierce group of South Korean divers fight to save their vanishing culture from looming threats.

Kimjongilia

January 2009 •English

The first film to fully expose the humanitarian crisis of North Korea, this stylish, deeply moving documentary is centered around astonishing interviews with survivors of North Korea's vast and largely hidden prison camps, and interspersed with archival footage of North Korean propoganda films and original art performances.

This is the President

May 2023 •Korean

Why did Moon Jae-in, a human rights lawyer who hated politics, become president? During five years at the Blue House, why didn’t he use his power? Why did he just silently plant flowers while being sworn at by protesters? One by one, those who watched him reveal their hidden stories.

The Reservoir Game

September 2017 •Korean

An investigative reporter seeks to expose the whereabouts of a slush fund belonging to the former president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak.

The Rainbow Passage

February 2020 •English

Following a year in Cadance and Amanda's gender transition, this intimate documentary charts not only their personal transformation but the building of a life and community together in regional New South Wales.

White Jungle

December 2011 •Korean

It is year 2011 and the government still talks of economic growth through medical care under the table. In reality, common people cannot afford to go to a hospital. They are nothing but extra casts in a promotional film for showing. The reality is a white jungle where medical care has become the market of extreme commercialization and doctors and patients are just too familiar with the physiology of jungle life. New rules and regulations must be practiced in this jungle. The film finds a solution by looking at medical care not as a personal means of production but community welfare.

Beyond Utopia

October 2023 •English

A courageous pastor uses his underground network to rescue and aid North Korean families as they risk their lives to embrace freedom.

A State of Mind

August 2005 •English

Two young North Korean gymnasts prepare for an unprecedented competition in this documentary that offers a rare look into the communist society and the daily lives of North Korean families. For more than eight months, film crews follow 13-year-old Pak Hyon Sun and 11-year-old Kim Song Yun and their families as the girls train for the Mass Games, a spectacular nationalist celebration.

Family in the Bubble

December 2018 •Korean

My parents were real estate developers and dealers in the 1980s. They achieved the ‘middle class dream’ thanks to the development boom. However, the Asian financial crisis swept everything away.

Dans la peau de Kim Jong-Un

May 2015 •French

Dictator: One Crazy Job

June 2013 •French

They’ve become the human face of inhuman barbarity. Leaders like Hitler, Idi Amin Dada, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceausescu, Bokassa, Muammar Kadhafi, Khomeini, Mussolini and Franco governed their countries completely cut off from reality. These paranoid leaders were driven to abuse their power by the pathology of power itself. Dictators are driven by a relentless, thought-out determination to impose themselves as infallible, all-knowing and all-powerful beings. But they are also men ruled by their caprices, uncontrollable impulses, and reckless fits of frenzy, which paradoxically render them as human as anyone else. The abuses they committed were clearly atrocious, yet some of them were as outlandish as the characters portrayed in the film The Dictator. They sunk to depths worthy of Kafka: so incredibly absurd, they are outrageously funny.

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.

Quo Vadis

December 2014 •Korean

The church is the body of Christ. In Greece, the church embodied a philosophy. Then in Rome, it became an institution. Spreading throughout Europe, it became one with the culture there. Traveling to the US, the church became a business. And when it arrived in Korea, it became a conglomerate. The top five largest churches in the world are located in Korea. However, Christ has long been absent in the nation. So then, what is the church? Who is Jesus Christ? What kind of world do Christians want? If the church is indeed the body of Christ, then we must ask the questions point-blank. Where do we stand in all this? And where exactly are we headed? Korean churches—“Quo Vadis?” Korean society—“Quo Vadis?”

Open Shutters

October 2021 •Korean

While reporting on the rise of spy cam porn in South Korea, a crime that affects thousands each year, a journalist discovers that she too is being watched in her own home. She decides to speak out, joining a nationwide movement of women seeking protection from this frighteningly ubiquitous crime.