North Korean Labor Camps

Russia's Wild Arctic

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.

North Koreans are breaking down the barriers of the gulag state. Following covert filmmakers, this doc shows real life under the new leader Kim Jong Un, highlighting the contrasting ox-drawn farms to the glittering life of the elite in Pyongyang. The starving children on the streets are of artificial food shortages engendered by corruption. See how USBs, cell phones and DVDs from the South are transforming North Koreans' views of their world.

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.

Really strange documentary of Wheeler Dixon production quality on the Tunguska Event and the possibility of it happening again causing an apocalypse (basically a meteor scare film) sprinkled with UFO conspiracy kooks, and other 'professionals', riddled with stock footage of all kinds, freaky moog music and sound fx, a Dr. Who rip-off end theme, Victor Buono as Homer the Archivist, a philosophical history recorder in a space ship with a HAL 9000 type talking computer named Ino, there's also another space ship with Egyptian looking aliens girls with pasties and see-thru blouses.

If the cityscapes and patriotic anthems of this film seem a far cry from the bleak landscape of Seoul Train, that's no accident. Dutch filmmaker Pieter Fleury, with the full permission and cooperation of the North Korean government, created this propaganda film that gives us a glimpse of a day in the life of one of the world's most enigmatic societies. A Day in the Life, largely dictated by the North Korean film bureau, follows a typical North Korean family through their daily duties, largely dedicated to the pride in the North Korean nation of comrades and the glory of General Kim Jong Il. The film is meant to extol the success of modern North Korea. But does it? With straight footage and a total absence of narration, viewers may interpret Fleury's film in a slightly different manner than intended

The assassination of Kim Jong-nam occurred on 13 February 2017 when two women attacked him with VX nerve agent, a lethal chemical weapon, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. Kim was the eldest son of deceased North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and the half-brother of current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. North Korean diplomats objected to any form of autopsy being conducted on Kim's body, but the autopsy proceeded as the they did not submit a formal protest. Following Malaysia's refusal to release the body immediately, North Korea's ambassador Kang Chol accused Malaysia of collaborating with the country's enemies over the assassination of Kim Jong-nam.

Captured by the Red Army during World War II, Hungarian soldier András Toma was admitted to a Soviet psychiatric hospital. After disappearing from prisoner-of-war records, he was presumed dead in Hungary. Because his name was incorrectly recorded in medical documents and he spoke only Hungarian—mistaken by staff for incoherent speech—Toma spent decades misunderstood and isolated in the institution. Fifty-three years later, a visiting Slovak doctor recognised his language, triggering an investigation by Hungarian authorities. Toma was repatriated in 2000, believed to be the last prisoner of war from World War II to return home.

Imagine one of the most remote wildernesses in the world. Granddaughter Masha and Vladimir, the protagonists of this story from Central Siberia try the impossible to keep their nomadic traditions alive.

This story began in the seventies. Then the American ornithologist George Archibald turned to Soviet scientists led by Vladimir Flint with a proposal to cooperate in the protection of the white Siberian crane. This species was little studied and was considered endangered. Since then, we know much more about white cranes. Now on Earth there are two disparate populations of Siberian Cranes. One is East Siberian. These birds nest in the north of Yakutia and migrate to China. There are more than three thousand of them, and in the near future they are not threatened with extinction. A few thousand kilometers away, another population of Siberian Cranes lives. They nest in the lower reaches of the Ob, and fly to India or Iran for the winter. There are only twenty of them left. This film is about how people are trying to save this West Siberian branch of white cranes.

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.

After 20 years of living in Berlin, the director Olga Delane goes back to her roots in a small Siberian village, where she is confronted with traditional views of relationships, life and love. The man is the master in the home; the woman’s task is to beget children and take care of the household (and everything else, too). Siberian Love provides unrivaled insights into the (love) life of a Siberian village and seeks the truth around the universal value of traditional relationships.

"A Postcard from Pyongyang" is a journey into a deeply enigmatic and completely isolated country that keeps the world in suspense: North Korea. Friends Gregor Möller, Philip Kist and Anne Lewald visit in 2013 and 2017 and do what is strictly forbidden and for which they might have ended up in a forced labor camp: even though accompanied by state watchers, they secretly film their travels, accompanied by state watchdogs. We get an extraordinary insight into one of the most closed societies in the world and experience the 'beautiful new world' as the state propaganda machinery displays it.

In 1829 the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt attempted a russian-siberian expedition. Humboldt travelled to obtain a clear view of nature, people and life in this immense country. 2019 naturalists and humanists attempted a transdisciplinary expedition on the trails of Humboldt. To capture the events various cameras were taken along. A non-chronological narration.

About 3 thousand years ago, apparently due to climate change, musk oxen in Eurasia became completely extinct. They remained only in hard-to-reach places in North America and Greenland. To return the musk oxen to their historical homeland, scientists decided to conduct an experiment and brought 30 musk oxen to Taimyr. To find out how the experiment went, 35 years later we set off on a long trip to Taimyr and there we try to meet musk oxen.

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?

In the middle of the Siberian taiga, 450 miles from the nearest village, live two families : the Braguines and the Kilines. Not a single road leads there. A long trip on the Ienissei River, first by boat, then by helicopter, is the only way to reach Braguino. Self-sufficient, both families live there according to their own rules and principles. In the middle of the village: a barrier. The two families refuse to speak. In the river sits an island, where another community is being built : that of the children. Free, unpredictable, wild. Stemming from the fear of the other, that of wild beasts, and the joy procured by the immensity of the forest, unravels a cruel tale in which tensions and fear give shape to the geography of an ancestral conflict.

The real crisis in North Korea is not about its reclusive leaders or its nuclear weapons. It is about 24 million people living under the most ruthless system of political oppression ever assembled by humankind. The North Korean people have suffered through crippling poverty, humanitarian disasters, chronic food shortages, and a denial of even the most basic freedoms. This documentary offers a comprehensive overview of the North Korean people's crisis, feature interviews with North Korean refugees who have escaped, their journey to freedom, expert analysis, and insight into some of the grassroots changes happening inside the country.

After 20 years of wandering taiga weather stations searching for a suitable place for having a life, Nataliya and Yuri Usovy settled on Olkhon island, on a remote weather station. They thought to find happiness here.

In 2021, an extreme heatwave gave rise to huge wildfires in the vast subarctic forests of Sakha, a northeastern republic in Siberia. The village of Shologon lies in this taiga landscape, shrouded in orange smoke and black ash. The forest is burning and the flames are approaching fast.