Shadow Flowers(HKAFF 2020)

Most think of North Korea as a place to escape from, but Kim Ryun-hee has been trying her hardest to go back. In 2011, the North Korean housewife was duped into traveling to South Korea for work. Once there, she had no way of returning to Pyongyang. Forced to stay in the South, she has waged a long and desperate fight to go home. From staging protests to seeking asylum elsewhere, she tries out different tactics while being constantly monitored in a country that doesn’t welcome her – but also won’t let her leave. Setting aside assumptions and stereotypes about North Korea, Oscar-nominated documentarian Yi Seung-jun highlights the plight of an ordinary person caught in limbo between two countries and an opaque bureaucratic system.