This film was released 26th February 2016, and is no longer screening.

EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI

Spanish director Álvaro Longoria is granted exclusive access to North Korea to film in any location he wants, provided it is on a controlled, government-sanctioned route through the country.

Longoria’s aim is to expose the tensions that exist between the two propaganda machines at work, the internal one convincing North Korea’s population of 24 million that the country is prospering, and the global one dedicated to proving to the west that North Korea is a potentially dangerous political loose cannon. His tour guide is, coincidentally, another Spaniard, Alejandro Cao, who is the Special Delegate on North Korea’s Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. Whether Cao is assisting or hindering Longoria’s attempts to look behind the curtain, as it were, is in doubt. It is possible Longoria’s entire expedition is being stage managed to an alarming degree. (Notes by David O’Mahony.)

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