Repatriation

Kim's landmark documentary transcends the generally strident left wing tradition of agit-prop film-making in South Korea, refusing both the usual tone of bravura defiance and any temptation to wallow in victimhood. It starts from the release in spring 1992 of two political prisoners (both avowed communists, they'd been locked up for 30 years as notional spies for North Korea), and traces Kim's relationship with them and their circle of sympathisers over the following twelve years. Kim's first-person narration foregrounds his own questions and confusions: about the men's unwavering loyalty to a regime now known to be indefensible, about his own past political naivety, about the psychological cost of being a dissident in the martial-law South Korea of the '70s and '80s, and about the phantom of Korean reunification. The film's deep-rooted honesty and candour are genuinely moving.