Under the Sun
V luchakh solnca
DIRECTOR: Vitaly Mansky COUNTRIES: Russia, Germany, Czech Republic, North Korea YEAR: 2015 LANGUAGE(S): Korean SUBTITLES: German RUNNING TIME: 94 min
SECTION: Weekender 2016, Open Eyes 2016
SYNOPSIS
8-year-old Zin-mi lives with her parents in Pyongyang in conditions straight out of a North Korean picture book. Director Vitaly Mansky was allowed to accompany them with his camera for a year, closely guarded by the regime’s watchdogs. His film looks behind the façade of an omnipresent state production – what doesn’t fit is actually made to fit for the filmmaker from abroad.
Mansky’s camera captures both in this impressive film: the visually stunning spectacle of a North Korean fairytale of prosperity and the constant ‘stage directions’ of the secret service. Rarely has one been able to learn so much about North Korea as here.
VITALY MANSKY
The Russian-Ukrainian director Vitaly Mansky was born in 1963 in the then Soviet city of Lvov. He began his studies at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow in 1982 and made his debut in 1988 with the film BUMERANG. Since then, Mansky has made over 30 films, which have been shown at film festivals around the world and won over 100 awards, including at Dok Leipzig (MDR Film Prize 2013), the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival (Jury Prize 2007) and the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Best Documentary Film 2013). Since 1996, Mansky has been collecting amateur footage from the former USSR as part of a large-scale archive project. His aim is to create an audiovisual memory of private life in the Soviet Union. Mansky’s speciality is documenting life in regimes. His motivation as a filmmaker is based on his biography: he wants to understand how his parents were able to live in what was then Soviet Russia. ‘My main interest lies in the concept of freedom,’ says the director, ’and in its limitations.’ He takes up this theme again in his new film IM STRAHL DER SONNE. According to Mansky, Soviet communism was also directed against real life. ‘In the Soviet Union, people’s freedom of movement was severely restricted. But at least they were free in their minds. In North Korea, not even that is the case. That’s the real tragedy of their social system: people can’t imagine any other life!’
FILMOGRAPHY
Bumerang (1988), Cuts of Another War (1993), Bliss (1995), Private Chroniken. Monolog (1999), Broadway. Black Sea (2002), Gagarins Pioniere (2005), Wild Wild Beach (2006), Virginity (2008), Motherland or Death (2011), Die Trasse (2013), Im Strahl der Sonne (2015)
SCRIPT: Vitaly Mansky PRODUCERS: Natalya Manskaya, Simone Baumann, Filip Remunda CAMERA: Alexandra Ivanova, Mikhail Gorobchuk EDITOR: Andrej Paperny MUSIC: Karlis Auzans
PRODUCTION: Vertov, Saxonia Entertainment Gmbh, Hypermarket Film s.r.o. WORLD SALES: Ina Rossow, Deckert Distribution GERMAN DISTRIBUTOR: Salzgeber & Co. Medien Gmbh