All told, we know little of North Korean cinema except that Kim Jong-il (Kim Jong-un’s father) was a film fanatic. And yes, out of the 1,500 books (!) he wrote, there is a treatise on film as the ultimate propaganda tool. He had his artists tutored by several eminent Russian filmmakers. He had South Korean film stars kidnapped to act at gunpoint (the famous local Godzilla from 1978, Pulgasari)....
The reminiscences of a man who regrets his past transgressions and pines for his true love. She is more resilient, however, having long since chosen to work alone for the common good. A Bellflower deals...
Feature film
NORTH KOREA | 121 minutes | 1972
An example of more contemporary North Korean cinema, A Schoolgirl’s Diary is also the very first film from the hidden kingdom to have been distributed abroad (in France in 2007). What does teen...
NORTH KOREA | 85 minutes | 2006
The ultimate classic, often described as the country’s Gone with the Wind, it’s the adaptation of an opera written by no less than Kim Il-sung (Kim Jong-il’s father). The scene opens on a Korea...
The local adaptation of one of the most famous Korean folk tales in both the North and South, The Tale of Chun Hyang is a costume drama that deals with class struggle through a tale of forbidden love...
NORTH KOREA | 147 minutes | 1980
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