Under the Sun – Review by Suzy Nelson-Pollard
This film will be shown on Wednesday the 20th of April, at 20.00 at the Grand Champ theatre in Gland. Tickets can be bought here
If it wasn’t a reality for the millions of people living in North Korea, Under the Sun could almost be a sci-fi film. Russian director, Vitaly Mansky, received permission to film a “normal family” in their everyday lives in North Korea. Each scene was carefully staged and rehearsed and re-rehearsed, each time with “more happiness and patriotism”. Yet due to the lack of technical know-how of the Koreans, Mansky managed to keep filming during the staging of each scene, and smuggle the footage out of the country.
Photo above – courtesy Visions du Réel
The results are impressive, funny at first sight, yet sobering and tragic as the film goes on. School lessons, work, free time, childhood and adulthood, every moment is devoted to praise to the Supreme Leader. Scenes of people commuting to work and children travelling to school are astounding, as nobody talks to each other, nobody smiles, laughs, and the faces that pass across the camera are desolate, fatigued, cold and desperate. As the young child of the family realizes how growing up comes with more responsibility and will require serving the Supreme Leader as best she can, tears stream down her face. Her mother tells her to think of something happy, and when she can’t summon such a thought, she recites a poem declaring her faithfulness to the Leader. There is nothing else that she can rejoice for.
While staged photos of beautiful parades, as well as horrific human rights reports, are usually the only sources to understand North Korea, “Under the Sun” is an astounding record of the country. Demonstrating the extent of the repression, the brainwashing, the fear and the control placed on the inhabitants of this small northern country, the documentary is also beautifully filmed. It should not be missed. See trailer below.