Director: Madeline Gavin

This gripping documentary about North Koreans trying to flee the oppressive regime is as disturbing and harrowing as any horror film.

It focuses on the fascinating South Korean Christian Pastor, Seungeun Kim, who, partly motivated by the death of his young son some years earlier, has helped hundreds of refugees escape North Korea. This means dealing with amoral but reliably greedy ‘brokers’ to smuggle them out. As Kim wryly points out, if the brokers do not deliver their human cargo their reputation will be shot and the payments will dry up.

We follow the North Korean Ro family as they undertake the arduous and dangerous journey from their home, hoping to reach Thailand where Pastor Kim will meet them and escort them over the border to South Korea. To do so they must trek through Vietnam and Laos, both of which enjoy good relations with North Korea, meaning the family would be sent back home if caught. Ro family members include children and a true believer grandma who is unwilling to denounce the North Korea leadership, believing that Kim Jong-un has had the mantle of leadership thrust on him at too early an age and is doing his best.

Also featured is an agonized North Korean woman Soyeon Lee, now living in Seoul, desperately trying to find information on her son who attempted to escape, but was apprehended in China.

Moments of almost unbearable tension sit next to troubling glimpses of life in authoritarian North Korea, captured via illicit iPhone footage, their blurriness augmenting the dystopian nightmarish feel.

The documentary also features fascinating insights, via refugee accounts, into quotidian life in North Korea, such as how neighbours would steal each other’s excrement to make their manure quota, and how officials would drop in unannounced to citizen’s houses wearing white gloves to run their fingers over the obligatory portrait of Kim Jong-un to ensure it had been dusted.

Beyond Utopia is out now.

David Willoughby

Follow David on Twitter @DWill_Crackfilm