Beyond Utopia

An account of the hazardous journey that North Korean dissidents – and those who help them – take to flee one of the world’s most repressive regimes.

Madeleine Gavin’s chilling film focuses on North Korean activists and defectors who describe the difficulties of fleeing a dictatorship that has ruled over their country since the 1940s. Combining interviews with secretly shot footage, the film explores a nation whose authorities have rarely granted access to the outside world. With landmines littering the demilitarised zone between South and North Korea, those wishing to escape Kim Jong-il’s regime must flee to China. But there they face the possibility of arrest or even being repatriated, where they would likely face imprisonment, torture and death. Beyond Utopia is a fascinating, sobering and necessary portrait of this world.