Synopsis
Dear travelers, welcome to a film tour to North Korea!
In its catalogue, a Czech travel agency offers a “journey into the unknown,” a tour of North Korea. This spring was the second time since 1990 that a group of Czech tourists set foot in the DPRK. The film follows twenty-seven Czechs who have decided to spend approximately 2,600 Euros on a sightseeing tour of a country which cultivates a cult of personality, maintains concentration camps for its citizens and doesn’t hide its development of nuclear weapons. Foreign visitors are only allowed a view of a carefully prepared illusion, thoroughly supervised by “guides.” What is more, the North Korean system is starkly reminiscent of our own past. Which emotions do our travellers experience: sympathy, nostalgia or, in contrast, happiness that “we already have this behind us?” How does a Czech person, after being accustomed to eighteen years of freedom and democracy, come to terms with the directives and restrictions of a totalitarian system?
Country
Czech Republic
Producers
Milan Kuchynka
Genre
Documentary
Co-producers
HBO, With the support of Czech Film Fund
Release Date
26. 2. 2008
Screening Formats
DVD, SD Files
Runtime
76 min
Trailer & Photogallery
Cast & Crew
Director
Linda Jablonská
Writer
Linda Jablonská
Editor
Jakub Voves
Cinematography
David Cysař, Linda Jablonská
MUSIC
Francois Pignon
Sound Designer
Ivan Horák
About the film
Tourists from the Czech Republic, who decided to spend around sixty thousand Czech crowns for a six-day holiday in the DPRK, are already handing in their mobile phones in Beijing. It is also forbidden to bring GPS devices or “objectionable” printed materials into the country. During the trip, tourists bow several times to the statues of Great Leader, listen to explanations about American imperialist evil and admire the monumental Stalinist architecture with a significant dose of irony. The local government tourism office will let tourists see pre-selected places in the capital city of Pyongyang or the surrounding areas and even take them to one of the world’s most heavily guarded borders between North and South Korea. Although (or precisely because) Czech tourists are taken care of as if they were a government delegation, some accept these “attractions” with embarrassment and with doubts about their own moral responsibility. Czech tourists along with the film crew become part of an elaborate system that needs tourists for its own promotion. In addition, the North Korean present is strikingly similar to the Czech totalitarian past.