Director‘s Statement:
It is certainly very challenging to face and trace eight people who traversed from North Korea to the Soviet Union and then Central Asia over a half century. They were young elites from North Korea studying mostly at Moscow Film School in 1950s. Once defected to the Soviet Union after criticizing KIM, Il-sung, they had to struggle themselves to find their new work and homes. Some of them have made their names as filmmaker, cinematographer and writer. Others die poor and anonymous. Documentary practice will be a way to awaken the nine dead men and let them speak in various modes.
Seven out of eight were already gone when we started our documentary project. One out of two survivors passed away and there is only one left now—the last survivor of and witness to Korean War, Partition, KIM, Il-sung as well as to Stalin.
These ten people are a living archive of yet untold history. Mobilizing the archival materials against the great landscape of Central Asia, this filmmaking will look at the ways in which the youths rebelled against the power in order to find their voices resonant with the rest of the world.
It is a great story of big defeats and small victories across Eurasia. They beg to think about the partition and re-unification of two Koreas—South and North.