Crossing the Line

Bright Future

2024

In the summer of 1989, the 13th edition of the World Festival of Youth and Students was held in Pyongyang. Thousands of socialist youth from 177 countries celebrated their belief in a better society and international solidarity.

Homes Apart: Korea

1991

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.

An Inconvenient Border: Where China Meets North Korea

2017

Bob Woodruff’s daring 880-mile journey along the China-North Korea border examines the delicate relationship between the two countries and the United States.

Shadow Flowers

2021

Ryun-hee Kim, a North Korean housewife, was forced to come to South Korea and became its citizen against her will. As her seven years of struggle to go back to her family in North Korea continues, the political absurdity hinders her journey back to her loved ones. The life of her family in the North goes on in emptiness, and she fears that she might become someone, like a shadow, who exists only in the fading memory of her family.​

Kimjongilia

2009 · ★ 6.2

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.

Shim: American Opens a Cafe at the DMZ

2024 · ★ 10

A cafe is growing, tucked in to the mountainside air raid shelter of the DMZ borderlands. A light light flickers, illuminating the past, present, and future. I'll see you at the DMZ! Shim was a free, one-day pop-up cafe staged in Yangji-ri village’s air raid shelter at the Korean DMZ. Referencing Korean cafe culture’s fixation on third place, the DMZ’s evolution from security tourism, to ecological peace tourism, and its repurposing as art production site, Shim attempts to intervene and align the past and present. Yangji-ri was one of many minbuk propaganda villages established by the Park Chung Hee regime in the 1960s to showcase the farming bounty and prosperity of the south for a North Korean gaze. The village was formerly part of the Civilian Control Line (CCL) until 2013 when it was reterritorialized as a normal part of South Korea.

Hana, dul, sed

2009 · ★ 4.8

A film about four young women in Pyongyang who share a passion for football. The documentary follows their journey from national team players to retirement, highlighting their friendship and the impact of football on their lives.

Pyongyang in Four Seasons

1994

Pyongyang, a city full of happy people and flowers. A city of factories with smiling seamstresses and welders of locomotives. A city of power plants the illuminate department stores offering the fruits of the labour of its workers and peasants. Everybody spends their free time in sports palaces with synchronized swimming and white doves, or in the palace of cultures, where young pioneers play the accordion. Old men and women go on walks and young lovers rent boats by the river, above which arches a rainbow, a symbol of happiness and contentment.

A State of Mind

2005 · ★ 7.9

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.

Cinema in the Land of Comrade Kim

2024 · ★ 10

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

PAN MUN JOM, You have never seen

2021

In July 1951, all the sides to the Korean War sought a ceasefire. For a ceasefire, the Allied and Communist forces began to hold talks at Naebongjang, located northeast of Kaesong. However, they only sharply opposed each other and didn't make progress in the negotiation. In October 1951, the two sides met again in the small village of Neolmun-ri below Gaeseong. They set up tents there to negotiate and named the place Panmunjom. The name Panmunjeom is a combination word of Panmun, meaning Neulmun-ri, and “Jom,” of an inn.

What I managed to spy on in North Korea

In the second part of our film about North Korea, we peeked into real life in one of the most closed countries in the world. What does the average person's day look like? What currency do they use? Who works the fields? What do local guides hide from tourists? To answer all these questions, we grabbed a hidden camera and went filming in North Korea.