IMDb RATING
6.7/10
948
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North Korean defectors tell their stories of repression, escape and hope.North Korean defectors tell their stories of repression, escape and hope.North Korean defectors tell their stories of repression, escape and hope.
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- 9 nominations
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaOfficial Competition Selection at the Sundance Film Festival 2009.
Featured review
There's absolutely no doubt that North Korea is one of the most mysterious, most secretive and most repressive regimes in the world today. For those reasons, I suppose it holds a certain fascination for a lot of people - myself included. It makes no sense. The very concept of a family dynasty in a Communist country is completely contradictory, and yet North Korea seems poised in the near future to move on to the third generation of the Kim Dynasty. This movie takes its name from the second of the Kim Dynasty - the Dear Leader himself, Kim Jong-Il. In fact, the name "Kimjongilia" is actually the name of a flower named after Kim Jong-Il that was developed by a Japanese botanist to celebrate Korean- Japanese friendship. The flower - a point this documentary makes repeatedly - is supposed to represent wisdom, love, justice and peace. Go figure.
This film centres on the brutality of the North Korean dictatorship and on the desperate situation of the North Korean people, who face hunger and repression every moment of every day. Their lives are completely choreographed from birth on - a point brilliantly made by the scenes of brilliantly choreographed and very beautiful demonstrations and military parades. It's told through the eyes of several people who have escaped the country and its system of prison camps, and it mixes in some snippets of North Korean history and some fascinating examples of North Korean film-making, whose sole purpose seems to be to virtually deify the Kims. The point is made several times that Kim Il-Sung - the founder of the dynasty - is regarded as a virtual god, while Kim Jong-Il, his son, is also revered in a manner fit for a deity. The stories are heart-breaking, and the film clearly leads up to its last few scenes, which are a thinly veiled appeal for the world's help in ridding North Korea of this evil system, so the film is hardly unbiased - nor should it be. The Kim Dynasty is an evil dynasty that has happily kept its people brutally under its thumb for 60 years. There's no reason to sugar-coat that, and this film doesn't do that even for a second. Also coming in for some harsh words near the end of this is the People's Republic of China, a nation hardly loved by North Korean dissidents because it returns to North Korea those escapees it catches who have made it into China.
Overall this is a very good film. I wasn't entirely clear on the purpose of the dancing girl who kept popping up or on the point her dance moves were making. It almost seemed as if this was a sort of "narration by dance." The film paints a very believable picture of what life is like north of the 38th parallel on the Korean Peninsula, although it doesn't really tackle the question of why people living in such desperate circumstances don't revolt - when people who were less desperate than this revolted against vicious Communist dictators in Eastern Europe (especially Romania.) So many questions remain when this is over, but it gives perhaps the clearest picture of life in North Korea that I've come across.
This film centres on the brutality of the North Korean dictatorship and on the desperate situation of the North Korean people, who face hunger and repression every moment of every day. Their lives are completely choreographed from birth on - a point brilliantly made by the scenes of brilliantly choreographed and very beautiful demonstrations and military parades. It's told through the eyes of several people who have escaped the country and its system of prison camps, and it mixes in some snippets of North Korean history and some fascinating examples of North Korean film-making, whose sole purpose seems to be to virtually deify the Kims. The point is made several times that Kim Il-Sung - the founder of the dynasty - is regarded as a virtual god, while Kim Jong-Il, his son, is also revered in a manner fit for a deity. The stories are heart-breaking, and the film clearly leads up to its last few scenes, which are a thinly veiled appeal for the world's help in ridding North Korea of this evil system, so the film is hardly unbiased - nor should it be. The Kim Dynasty is an evil dynasty that has happily kept its people brutally under its thumb for 60 years. There's no reason to sugar-coat that, and this film doesn't do that even for a second. Also coming in for some harsh words near the end of this is the People's Republic of China, a nation hardly loved by North Korean dissidents because it returns to North Korea those escapees it catches who have made it into China.
Overall this is a very good film. I wasn't entirely clear on the purpose of the dancing girl who kept popping up or on the point her dance moves were making. It almost seemed as if this was a sort of "narration by dance." The film paints a very believable picture of what life is like north of the 38th parallel on the Korean Peninsula, although it doesn't really tackle the question of why people living in such desperate circumstances don't revolt - when people who were less desperate than this revolted against vicious Communist dictators in Eastern Europe (especially Romania.) So many questions remain when this is over, but it gives perhaps the clearest picture of life in North Korea that I've come across.
Details
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- Also known as
- Kimjongilia
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Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $4,362
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $1,497
- Mar 21, 2010
- Gross worldwide
- $7,447
- Runtime1 hour 15 minutes
- Color
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Top Gap
By what name was The Flower of Kim Jong II (2009) officially released in Canada in English?
Answer