Under the Sun

First, to the people decrying this film as mere propaganda, I say you are either: 1. North Korean agents trying to put a happy face on a horrible situation, or, 2. are just plain dumb. if you honestly think the DPRK is a paradise, I triple dog dare any of you to pack up your Che Guevara t-shirts and move there.

If you actually pay attention to the film, you will see many, although sadly, not all, of the people look sad, frightened, beaten down, or all 3.

Places like North Korea are true hells on earth and how ANYONE can defend a regime such as this is beyond my ken.

Mansky deserves every possible praise for this piece. To make this movie despite DPRK's restrictions necessitated a lot of courage. If they were caught smuggling the footage out of North Korea, the harshest sentence wouldn't have missed them.

This film is a testament to the horrible conditions the North Korean people must live in and portrays a perfect behind the scenes look to the inner workings of the North Korean propaganda machine. The people in the DPRK's government coming up with this idea mustn't have really been the sharpest tools in the shed, inviting a foreign respected director to shoot stupid propaganda piece I could've shot.

I'm proud that the Czech Republic had its hand in financing the film and thus helping to open the eyes of the world to the mental abuse of every single North Korean citizen taking place every single day. Bravo to the three crew members and their courage!

A foreign crew is somehow given permission to shoot in North Korea. The term "documentary" is a bit far-fetch here, since everything is actually staged by an escort crew that supervises, scripts, directs and rehearses every scene being filmed.

If you want to see what George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR would look like if it became real life, watch this documentary.

Watching it, I got strong vibes of movies such as EQUILIBRIUM, METROPOLIS, SLEEPER and THE PRISONER. Basically, every movie which depicts life in a state of dictatorship becomes a reality here and Orwell's book is the bible. All the elements from his book can be found here: Pictures of the leader at every corner, a constant state of war with military at every corner and as the center of every class in school, brainwashing the minds of people since an early age and basically turning them into human robots that would obey everything they are being told to do and learning how to hate the Japanese and Americans, production is always told to be getting "more efficient", TV constantly broadcasts programs about the leader, his military and war, and you hardly see anyone smiling.

This is life in a constant state of fear and it's a living nightmare.

The movie is far from perfect – many scenes are way too long and repetitive, tighter editing could have made wonders here – but its value lies in the achievement of showing a surreal regime that is almost impossible to believe that still exists in the 21st century and showing how "reality" can easily be fabricated.

Good cinematography and excellent musical cues by Karlis Auzans.

6.5/10 Highly recommended

Greetings again from the darkness. There is an old episode of "The Twilight Zone" that has always stuck with me. It starred Bill Mumy (who later became well known as Will Robinson in "Lost in Space") as a young boy with God-like mental and telekinetic powers. The entire town was afraid of him, so they constantly acted in ways to make him believe they were happy and appreciated him. Memories of that show came rushing back as I watched this documentary from Russian director Vitaly Manskiy. We outsiders know little about life in North Korea (it's known as 'the Hermit Kingdom'), though the film seems to confirm what we've been led to believe: it's a country filled with citizens either living in fear or living with acceptance of their plight (or both).

Director Manskiy was contracted to make a movie about daily life of an ordinary family in Pyongyang. Two "escorts" were assigned to him, a state-sponsored script was provided, and his footage was reviewed daily. When the project was dissolved, Manskiy assembled the pieces … and added the secretly saved snippets from when he kept the cameras rolling between takes. The result is a documentary on the attempts of a Communist government to stage an illusion of perfection. It comes off as a foolish propaganda effort to convince the world that North Koreans are a happy people. What we see on screen convinces us otherwise.

At the center of all this is 8 year old Zin-mi and her family. If you thought The Monkees were a pre-fab TV version of The Beatles, this shows what true manipulation is all about. Zin-mi's parents are given new jobs for the movie version. Rather than a print journalist, her father is given a job as an executive at a garment factory; and rather than a cafeteria worker, her mother is presented as working at a soy milk factory. Additionally, the family is moved into a nice apartment and then provided with meal time conversation, and even told where and how to sit and stand.

Zin-mi has joined the Children's Union and the whole community is preparing for Day of the Shining Star – the national holiday celebrating the birthday of Kim Jong-Il; keeping alive the memory of their supreme leader who died in 2011. During these preparations, we see the clean streets and no-frills buildings, as well as the brainwashing that occurs during presentations and classes … the Japanese are labeled scoundrels, while Americans are cowards. The lingering images, and faces of those posing for photos, can't mask the emptiness of the individuals.

The film reinforces more than enlightens, and it's more a rare snapshot of this society than a global perspective. Still, we can't help but feel saddened for the people as their lines are fed to them with directions like, that was "too gloomy", and, do it again with "joy". No proof of the brutal regime is presented, but it's obvious freedom of thought is not encouraged. The correlation becomes all the more ironic when it's recalled that the title of that Twilight Zone episode was "It's a Good Life".

This European documentary about North Korea has a Czech title--V paprscích slunce--translated into English as Under the Sun (2015). (Google Translate says The Rays of the Sun, which I think works better.) It was written and directed by Vitaly Mansky, who is Ukrainian.

The film was made in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), which we call North Korea. Somehow, director Mansky got permission--or was asked--to film a "documentary" about a typical family in Pyongyang. The star is a young girl, Lee Zin-Mi.

What the filmmakers tell us in text on the screen is that the "documentary" they were making was totally artificial. Their North Korean handlers rehearsed every scene, and had no qualms about total fabrication of plot. (As just one example, Lee Zin-Mi's father is not an engineer. However, for the "documentary," he is an engineer who consults with workers at a clothing factory to help them increase their production.)

What the North Koreans didn't know--or didn't understand--was that director Mansky kept the camera rolling continually. We hear and see the North Koreans telling people what to say and do, and then we watch the scene when the people say it and do it. Sometimes we watch the scene twice, because the North Korean handlers don't like the way it turned out the first time. So, this really is a documentary, but it's a documentary about making a false documentary.

What stands out in every scene is that the whole city revolves around endless praise for the late Kim Jong-il, who was the supreme leader of the North Korea from 1994 to 2011. Now, along with praise of Kim Jong-Il, we hear continuous praise of Kim Jong-un, his son.

Kim Jong-un holds the titles of Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Chairman of the National Defense Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, and presidium member of the Politburo of the Workers' Party of Korea. Kim was promoted to the rank of Marshal of North Korea in the Korean People's Army on 18 July 2012, consolidating his position as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. (All this from Wikipedia.)

Poor Lee Zin-Mi has the same fate as all of her friends--a life where she participates in ceaseless devotion to Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-un. It's hard to tell whether she obtained any special rewards for starring in the documentary. Nothing is real, so nothing on screen can be trusted.

Actually, that's not true. Twice Zin-Mi breaks into tears. No one comforts her--they basically suggest that she stop crying so they can continue filming. The documentary may be false, but the tears are real.

We saw this movie at the excellent Little Theatre in Rochester, NY. On the small screen you'll miss some of the amazing pageantry that surrounds praise of Kim Jong-un. However, it will work well enough.