Aria - Courtesy of NHIFF

The North Korean Human Rights International Film Festival (NHIFF) started on Monday in Jakarta and will run through Nov. 30 and then will be held in Australia from Dec. 4 to 11.

Hosted by the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM) at the Ice Palace Concert Hall in Lotte Avenue shopping mall in South Jakarta, organizing committee Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights (NKnet) screened Under the Sun — a production created by the North Korea and Russia governments in 2015.

Directed by Russian Vitaly Mansky, the documentary follows 8-year-old Jin Mi over the course of a year as she prepares to join the Korean Children’s Union, run by the Workers’ Party. It is a big event for the family that falls on the Day of the Shining Star, the birth date of the country’s founding father, Kim Il-sung.

It depicts the good life she and her parents lead in Pyongyang — her mother works in a soymilk plant, her father is an engineer at a garment factory — a sophisticated town with spotless subways.

The only conflict in the story is that the documentary is being heavily scripted and choreographed. Mansky hijacked the project to unmask the reality, keeping the camera rolling and saving the shots in between scripted scenes.

“The documentary is supposed to be a propaganda tool for North Korea, but the director clandestinely took a different angle. I hope this screening will encourage Indonesia to take action in supporting the improvement of human rights in North Korea for the reunification of Koreans,” said South Korean NKnet activist Yoo Jae-kil at the discussion following the screening, which was also attended by Ambassador Cho Tae-young and North Korean defector, Pyongyang-born Cho Chung-hui.

“I was in tears watching the film because it depicted precisely what I had been through,” said Cho Chung-hui, explaining that the lack of electricity sources in the capital city has forced the people to push the bus until it reached the nearest power depot, as shown in the documentary.

The screening on Tuesday took place at Padjadjaran University in Bandung, West Java, hosted by the university’s human rights institute, while Jakarta International Korean School in Cipayung, East Jakarta, would host the closing day on Wednesday with the screening of three films.

Since 2011, the NHIFF had screened 80 films in Canada, France, Germany, South Korea and the US.
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Schedule

On Nov. 30 starting at 10 a.m. at the Jakarta International Korean School:

‘The Regular Hire’ (Drama/South Korea/30 minutes/Director Kim Tae-woong): Young Ho, 24, who came to South Korea 16 years ago, lives his dream of becoming an ordinary South Korean, working as a regular employee in a company amid stiff workplace competition.

‘I Love South Korea’ (Dark comedy/South Korea/30 minutes/Director Jeong Hae-seong): North Korean defector Hae Won films his day with an action camera and brings the recordings to his detective weekly.

‘Aria’ (Drama/South Korea/22 minutes/Director Shin Hyung-chang): Ki Young, an employee of the South Korean embassy in Thailand, interviews a blind 10-year-old girl, who was brought by Pastor Kim, the chief of a North Korean defector support group.

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