Beyond Utopia

CinemaSerf

2024-01-05

⭐ 7

Ably stitched together using hand-held, mobile phone and other discreetly shot footage, this documentary tells of people desperate to flee the poverty and oppression they face living in North Korea. It principally follows one particular family who must travel, at great peril to themselves, their guides and "brokers" across the Yalu river into China before continuing through Vietnam, Laos and hopefully across the Mekong into the safety of Thailand. Along the way, though, we are also introduced to other people with equally horrendous stories to tell of family stuck in a nation where malnutrition…

In today’s world, it’s almost unfathomable that there are places that exist on this planet that operate on the principles of unbridled cruelty, deliberate deception and mass brainwashing, with even the slightest of infractions capable of leading to banishment to remote gulags, brutal beatings and even savage public executions. However, such are the conditions of everyday life in North Korea, a paranoid, ruthless regime that doesn’t hesitate to inflict such indignities on its population and deprive residents of knowledge of anything beyond its borders. In a United Nations human rights report, t…