Doc/Fest - Sheffield

In the late 1980s Polish director Andrej Fidyk made The Parade, a documentary about the mass staged spectacles organised in North Korea
in support of the Communist authorities. If that film was about the public face of this politically repressive regime, then Yodok Stories is about an altogether more hidden side of that totalitarian state: the system of labour and concentration camps set up for ‘class enemies’. Having persuaded an exiled theatre director from North Korea to stage a musical about the camps, using the experiences of survivors who have now fled to the South, Fidyk follows the
production of the show. The musical movingly recreates stories of unfilmable suffering, while Fidyk’s sensitive interview approach elicits profoundly harrowing testimony from former camp inmates. A sombre, mournful, and necessarily distressing film.

“Smartly structured. The editing is exceptional and, above all, nothing is forced.” - Moving Pictures Magazine

“I cannot recommend this film enough to any and everyone. Humanity is ugly, and only through confronting that ugliness and recognizing it are we able to progress beyond it.” - Film Threat