Outstanding and eye-opening doc about North Korea: Beyond Utopia review

The documentary Beyond Utopia follows various families as they attempt to flee North Korea. It is eye-opening and outstanding. In essence, it is a life-or-death thriller told in real time where the stakes could not be higher. I watched at home, via a screening link, with a twenty-something who did not look at her phone once. Could there be a higher recommendation?

The film has been assembled by the American director Madeleine Gavin who employed a camera crew when it was safe to do so but otherwise made use of secret smuggled footage. Her way in is via Kim Seungeun, a South Korean minister who has bravely devoted himself – for reasons that become apparent – to helping North Koreans escape.

I watched it with a twenty-something who did not look at her phone once

We follow two cases. The first is Soyeon, a defector living in Seoul who was separated from her son a decade before. He is now 17 and she is desperate to get him out. The other is the Roh family, who have made a run for it after learning that, because other family members have already defected, they are on the ‘banishment list’ and will be killed.

There are five in the family, including two little girls and a grandma who is 80. They’ve made it across the Yalu River into China – we see them sitting in a ginseng field, stricken with terror – and now have to somehow journey on through China, Vietnam and Laos, all countries that will return escapees to North Korea and almost certain death. Grandma is brainwashed, bewildered, and can’t believe that Gavin won’t kill her. In North Korea, we learn, there is no word for ‘American’, only one for ‘American-Bastard’.