The Propaganda Game

Oct 3, 2015

1h 34m

★ 7.0

Overview

North Korea. The last communist country in the world. Unknown, hermetic and fascinating. Formerly known as “The Hermit Kingdom” for its attempts to remain isolated, North Korea is one of the largest sources of instability as regards world peace. It also has the most militarized border in the world, and the flow of impartial information, both going in and out, is practically non-existent. As the recent Sony-leaks has shown, it is the perfect setting for a propaganda war.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Mare Nostrum Productions

Morena Films

The Propaganda Game Trailers

Cast

Self (archive footage)

Kim Jong-un

Self (archive footage)

Kim Jong-il

Self (archive footage)

Kim Il-sung

Self (archive footage)

Barack Obama

Self (archive footage)

Harry S. Truman

Self

Alejandro Cao de Benós

Napalm is the story of the breathtaking and brief encounter, in 1958, between a French member of the first Western European delegation officially invited to North Korea after the devastating Korean war and a nurse working for the Korean Red Cross hospital, in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

0.0

Pay Off

Oct 11, 2023

As the novel 『LimGeojeong』 becomes a great success, the publisher and the writer's bereaved family in North Korea meet to solve the copyright problem. Their exchanges between South and North Korea create another novel-like story that condenses issues in various fields including politics, economy, and culture together with concerns and hospitality.

7.0

General Idi Amin Dada

May 29, 1974

Filmmaker Barbet Schroeder shows the Ugandan dictator meeting his Cabinet, reviewing his troops, explaining his ideology.

6.0

The Fantastic

Oct 15, 2021

In Maija Blåfield’s documentary, eight former North Koreans talk about what it was like to watch illegal films in a closed society. In addition to the 'waste videos', South Korean films were also smuggled into the country via China.

0.0

Ryeohaeng

Aug 8, 2019

A group of women climbs a summer mountain situated in South Korea. They are refugees who have settled into South Korean society after fleeing from North Korea. For them, climbing the mountains has been an unavoidable journey for survival - a matter of life and death.

0.0

Homes Apart: Korea

Jan 2, 1991

They speak the same language, share a similar culture and once belonged to a single nation. When the Korean War ended in 1953, ten million families were torn apart. By the early 90s, as the rest of the world celebrated the end of the Cold War, Koreans remain separated between North and South, fearing the threat of mutual destruction. Beginning with one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, filmmakers Takagi and Choy reveal the personal, social and political dimensions of one of the last divided nations on earth. The film was also the first US project to get permission to film in both South & North Korea.

7.2

Crossing the Line

Oct 16, 2006

In 1962, a U.S. soldier sent to guard the peace in South Korea deserted his unit, walked across the most heavily fortified area on earth and defected to the Cold War enemy, the communist state of North Korea. He became a star of the North Korean propaganda machine, but then disappeared from the face of the earth. Now, after 45 years, the story of James Dresnok, the last American defector in North Korea, is being told for the first time. Crossing the Line follows Dresnok as he recalls his childhood, desertion, and life in the DPRK.

6.8

Assassins

Aug 12, 2021

True crime meets global spy thriller in this gripping account of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of the North Korean leader. The film follows the trial of the two female assassins, probing the question: were the women trained killers or innocent pawns of North Korea?

0.0

The Girls

Jun 27, 2014

Four lucid grandmothers tell their story forgotten by history: the militancy and resistance of the young women of the leftist youth against the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

7.9

A State of Mind

Aug 10, 2005

Two young North Korean gymnasts prepare for an unprecedented competition in this documentary that offers a rare look into the communist society and the daily lives of North Korean families. For more than eight months, film crews follow 13-year-old Pak Hyon Sun and 11-year-old Kim Song Yun and their families as the girls train for the Mass Games, a spectacular nationalist celebration.

0.0

The 2nd Repatriation

Sep 29, 2022

In 2000, in the era of inter-Korean reconciliation, 63 non-converted prisoners were repatriated to the North, and a 2nd repatriation movement was launched in 2001 but failed again and again in later years. As of 2022, the average age of the surviving secondary repatriation applicants is 91.

7.0

Project Cheonan Ship

Sep 5, 2013

Interpreting an event of ROKS Cheonan corvette, torpedoed and sunken by North Korea, this documentary rebuilds the event with a different insight. No one can tell if the investigation of Cheonan has reached compelling conclusion. But the film tells and reveals how unreasonable Korean society is.

6.5

Dictator: One Crazy Job

Jun 12, 2013

They’ve become the human face of inhuman barbarity. Leaders like Hitler, Idi Amin Dada, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceausescu, Bokassa, Muammar Kadhafi, Khomeini, Mussolini and Franco governed their countries completely cut off from reality. These paranoid leaders were driven to abuse their power by the pathology of power itself. Dictators are driven by a relentless, thought-out determination to impose themselves as infallible, all-knowing and all-powerful beings. But they are also men ruled by their caprices, uncontrollable impulses, and reckless fits of frenzy, which paradoxically render them as human as anyone else. The abuses they committed were clearly atrocious, yet some of them were as outlandish as the characters portrayed in the film The Dictator. They sunk to depths worthy of Kafka: so incredibly absurd, they are outrageously funny.

7.8

Bureau 39: Kim's Cash Machine

Dec 15, 2020

How is it possible that North Korea, one of the poorest countries on earth finances a nuclear weapons program large enough to challenge the USA? The answer: Bureau 39, a legendary organization nestled deep inside the government apparatus. Its aim is to procure foreign exchange by any means possible to provide Kim Jong-un’s regime with money.

10.0

Cinema in the Land of Comrade Kim

Oct 12, 2024

The love of Kim Jong Il, the former dictator of North Korea, for cinema and his adventures, including the kidnapping of a director.

0.0

The VICE Guide to North Korea

Jul 3, 2008

"Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with. They finally said, “OK, OK, you can come. But only as tourists.” At the airport, the North Korean consulate brought us to a restaurant and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs. We were thinking, “Look, we were just on a plane for 20 hours. Can we just go to bed?” but this guy with our group who was from the LA Times told us, “Everyone in here besides us is secret police. If you don’t act excited then you’re not going to get your visa. So we got drunk and jumped up onstage and sang songs with the girls. The next day we got our visas. A lot of people we had gone with didn’t get theirs. That was our first hint at just what a freaky, freaky trip we were embarking on…" -VICE Founder Shane Smith

6.4

Nazis in the CIA

Oct 15, 2013

Florian Hartung and Dirk Pohlmann have reconstructed a previously unknown dimension of the collaboration between Nazis and the CIA in the Cold War. Drawing upon recently released documents, the film exposes for the first time a perfidious, worldwide net that reaches deep into the power structures of the Federal Republic of Germany. Lending their authority to the fact-finders’ mission are high-ranking statesmen, journalists and historians.

8.1

North Korea: The Parade

May 1, 1989

Defilada was made on the occasion of the 40th anniversary celebrations of state's founding in North Korea, which the regime intended to use to eclipse the 1988 Summer Olympics taking place that year in Seoul, South Korea. The North Korean regime invited filmmakers from countries then considered friendly (read: Communist), including People's Republic of Poland, which sent a team under Andrzej Fidyk. The documentary is primarily composed of declarative statements, as well as texts of North Korean newspapers and books. There was no author's commentary. Fidyk commented that he and his team were likely “the most disciplined” foreign team of filmmakers in North Korea, as they did not trouble the regime by looking under the surface - they were content with what they were given and asked to do. (Wikipedia)

6.2

Kimjongilia

Jan 18, 2009

The first film to fully expose the humanitarian crisis of North Korea, this stylish, deeply moving documentary is centered around astonishing interviews with survivors of North Korea's vast and largely hidden prison camps, and interspersed with archival footage of North Korean propoganda films and original art performances.

6.5

Against Oblivion

Dec 11, 1991

Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.

The Propaganda Game

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

The Propaganda Game Trailers