A courageous pastor uses his underground network to rescue and aid North Korean families as they risk their lives to embrace freedom.
Direction
Gavin embeds with defectors mid-escape — this is vérité under gunpoint.
Editing
Split-screen terror: family phone calls while border guards patrol.
Production
Underground footage from inside North Korea that shouldn't exist.
Director
Madeleine Gavin
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Madeleine Gavin spent four years earning trust with Pastor Kim's network; some defectors appear on camera for the first time anywhere.
The 'beyond utopia' title refers to how North Korea officially calls itself a socialist paradise while defectors describe something closer to hell — the film weaponizes this linguistic gap.
US
