Under the Sun - Vitaly Mansky 2015 1080p torrent

Video AVC / 1912х1028p / 23,976 fps / ~5.0 Mbps


English subtitles, Russian and Korean audio


During a scene in “Under the Sun,” a North Korean minder orders uniformed workers to form a line on the factory floor before they speak on camera. “Say that joyfully,” orders the minder, a bespectacled, middle-aged man, as he prods the laborers to talk about how much they love their work producing soy milk.

What the minder didn’t realize, however, was that the cameras were already recording, and his pushy efforts to concoct an idyllic scene of industrial glee had all been captured.

“Under the Sun”, a feature-length documentary shot in North Korea, is a behind-the-scenes look at a poor country that casts itself as an abundant paradise, and a filmmaking coup of sorts. Director Vitaly Mansky spent two years negotiating with the North Korean government over permission to film a documentary in one of the world’s most inaccessible countries. Under the terms of their agreement, North Korea wrote the script and selected the subjects. Mansky and his crew were allowed to film only approved scenes in specific locations, and the North Koreans would delete any footage they deemed unacceptable.

Under The Sun Official Trailer (2015)
"Under the Sun" trailer.
But Mansky had a plan to get around the censors and capture unscripted footage of life in the reclusive state: He left the digital cameras rolling all day as the team of North Koreans assigned to oversee the shoot manufactured each scene, coaching subjects on what to say and how to say it. At the end of each day, the North Koreans would go through the day’s shoot, but in a risky move, in a country where foreigners who act out sometimes spend years in jail, the crew kept duplicate memory cards of all footage, that they then snuck out of North Korea.

The emotional core of “Under the Sun” is Zin-mi, an 8-year-old girl. Mansky’s camera follows her as she prepares to join the Children’s Union, a youth group, his tender filmmaking capturing her mixed emotions.

In carefully managed scenes, she attends chest-thumping ceremonies where she and the rest of the incoming members strike a shrill harmony as they shout their allegiance to North Korea’s ruling dynasty. She is shown in a bright, spacious apartment with her parents, digging into generously portioned meals.

The minders constantly demand more: more enthusiasm, more volume, bigger smiles. In posturing for the foreign crew’s cameras, accuracy is an afterthought: In a scene at a textile factory, a worker boasts of having surpassed the official production target by 150%. In the next take, just a couple of minutes later, that number becomes 200%