Beyond Utopia (USA/UK, 2023)

Over the years, there has been no shortage of movies detailing the mysteries and human rights violations taking place inside the secretive world of North Korea. None has achieved the level of access found in Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia, which uses a combination of guerilla footage and interviews to create a vivid portrait of what it means to live inside and attempt to escape from the country – all without resorting to recreations and/or re-enactments.

The documentary’s central figure is Seungeun Kim, a South Korean pastor who has become renowned for his persistence and effectiveness in bringing defectors out of North Korea. At one point, he claims to have saved more than 1000 people in ten years. His efforts have taken a toll on his health, North Korea wants him dead, and he is no longer able to set foot in Thailand for fear of arrest. Beyond Utopia focuses on two extractions he attempted immediately before COVID-19 shut him down. (Spoilers follow about some of the details of those operations.)

When the movie opens, Pastor Kim is working with a mother, Soyeon Lee, to help bring her 17-year-old son out of the north so they can be reunited. The mother is a refugee but, when she left, she came alone – her child and mother remained. There is some question about whether the son’s goal is to defect to the south or attempt to bring his mother home. His motives are irrelevant – he is captured in China, returned to North Korea, tortured, and sentenced to a gulag where he will suffer and die. There is nothing she can do except weep and grieve.

The film’s other story fortunately has a happier ending, with Kim seeking to guide the Roh family (mother, father, 80-year-old grandmother, and two children) across China, onto a flight to Vietnam, on a cross-border trek to Laos, then eventually to non-Communist Thailand, where they can move freely. It’s a dangerous, arduous journey that at times seems doomed to failure. By using footage shot by the Rohs with their phone cameras to supplement the material provided by Gavin’s crew after they join the family in Vietnam, the film is able to craft a thriller chronicling the defectors’ efforts to evade authorities, circumvent obstacles, and make it to freedom.

While telling these all-too-real, evolving stories, Gavin includes interviews with several North Korean defectors, each of whom offers different (but equally horrifying) anecdotes about life under Kim Jong Un. Beyond Utopia also provides a brief primer of North Korean history to bring viewers up to speed about how things got to where they are. Perhaps the most surprising revelation is how completely controlled the citizens’ perceptions are by the state. They honestly believe that the North Korean government cares about them and, as bad as things may be, they are better off than the rest of the world. They accept Kim Jong Un as a deity-like figure. And they view Americans as sub-human, hate-filled monsters. It is said that in North Korea, there is no word for “American.” Instead, it is always “Bastard-American,” with the two words never separated.

As represented in Beyond Utopia, life inside North Korea borders on the surreal – a cult with millions of members whose knowledge is carefully controlled by the leaders and who have no genuine conception of what is happening beyond the borders of their nation. The images, many captured and smuggled out, portray the country as almost the product of an earlier century. The stories of brutality make the Stalin-era USSR and Nazi Germany seem tame by comparison.

Because this is a documentary, happy endings aren’t guaranteed. Perhaps when she began planning out the film, Gavin hoped for something less wrenching that what evolved in the case of Soyeon Lee’s son. But this is real life. There are no Rambo interventions. His fate, ugly as it is, is not unique but watching his mother’s reactions as she learns about it is as heartbreaking as anything I have seen in a recent movie.

One could make a minor argument against the way parts of Beyond Utopia have been assembled. I can understand the need to take breaks from the narrative aspects of the story but frequently cutting away from the Roh family’s saga diminishes tension. The film wisely doesn’t dwell too much on Lee’s tragedy – to do so might render the movie unwatchable.

Beyond Utopia falls short of masterpiece status but it is a powerful and affecting piece of filmmaking – one that highlights not only the horrors of living inside North Korea but illustrates the dangers and difficulties of escaping. In Seungeun Kim, Gavin has found a genuine hero, although his participation in events illustrates that his role in aiding defectors may soon have to change. A mixture of documentary and thriller, this is a compelling two-hour production.

Beyond Utopia (USA/UK, 2023)