Beyond Utopia
15
At the film's core is a courageous pastor, on a mission to help a mother reunite with the child she was forced to leave behind, and a family of five, including small children and an elderly grandmother, embarking on a treacherous journey into the hostile mountains of China. Leaving their homeland is fraught with unimaginable danger, yet these individuals are driven to take the risk.
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“An outstanding documentary.”
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“Using first-hand accounts, clandestine footage of torture and poverty, and a brutal editing style, Madeleine Gavin’s gripping film charts one family’s narrow escape from the clutches of a dictatorship.”
Nicholas Rapold, Sight and Sound
“'Beyond Utopia' has a quotidian terror. It peeks behind the Potemkin-village façade that, for too long, is all that we’ve really been able to see of North Korea.”
Owen Gleiberman, Variety
