Courage on camera

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, January 19th, 2024. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: we take a look at a couple of foreign language documentaries attracting a lot of attention.

Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino to talk about 20 Days in Mariupol and Beyond Utopia.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Documentaries have gotten a bad rap as of late, with true crime frequently veering into sensationalism, but two of the best documentaries from last year offer understated commentary that serves to heighten the atrocities they depict.

First up, we have 20 Days in Mariupol. It’s the story of the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On Feb. 24, 2022, a team of Associated Press reporters headed for the city of Mariupol, knowing it held strategic value for Vladimir Putin. Most of the film is in Ukrainian with English subtitles, but one of the reporters provides some sparse narration.

CHERNOV: Someone once told me, “Wars don’t start with explosions. They start with silence.

Getting into Mariupol was easy, but leaving proved more difficult once the invasion was in full swing. The team spent almost three weeks documenting the plight of a city under siege and their own harrowing experiences.

CHERNOV: I have no illusions about what will happen to us if we are caught.

For much of their 20 days in Mariupol, the reporters use a hospital on the edge of the city as a base of operations. A steady stream of casualties arrive, and the doctors valiantly attempt to save those they can. But as the days tick by, the necessities of life, including food, medicine, and electricity, become increasingly scarce. It feels like the city is trapped in a natural disaster, but the tragedy is compounded by the knowledge that this is a man-made disaster.

POLICEMAN: Russian troops commit war crimes. Our family, our womens, our children need helps.

The unfolding devastation is painful to watch. Russian shells obliterate Ukrainian homes. Old women cry out in confusion and despair. Children die on hospital operating tables. Mass graves are filled with civilians.

We follow the team’s desperate attempts to find internet access so they can send images and videos to their editors. These photos and videos provided the West with many of the indelible images from those early days of the war—the father crying over his dead teenage son, the pregnant woman led away on a gurney after Russian shells hit a maternity ward. 20 Days in Mariupol reveals the context of those stories…making the images even more heartbreaking.

NEWSCASTER: The electricity’s gone. The internet’s gone. The Russians are coming. Mariupol awaits its fate.

Not everyone will be able to stomach the violence recorded in 20 Days in Mariupol.

But our second documentary, Beyond Utopia, tells a similarly harrowing story, without being quite as graphic.

AUDIO: [Speaking in Korean]

Beyond Utopia follows Pastor Seunguen Kim of Caleb Mission Church in South Korea and his attempts to help defecting North Koreans. One day, Pastor Kim gets a call from a contact in China saying he’s found a family of five North Koreans who’ve crossed the Yalu River. He wants to know if Pastor Kim will help them escape to freedom. Despite the danger of smuggling defectors through a communist country, Pastor Kim says yes and boards a plane.

Pastor Kim’s plan is to smuggle the family through China, Vietnam, and Laos, hoping to reach freedom in Thailand. If they’re caught before they get to Thailand, they’ll be sent back to North Korea, where the family will be tortured and executed.

But Beyond Utopia doesn’t just document stories of defection, it also reveals the current conditions in North Korea and how the country became what it is today.

HYEONSEO LEE: Everything you learned was lie and your country’s history was so fabricated and everyone around you was so brainwashed and the heroes you worshiped were actually monstrous villains.

I knew things were bad in North Korea, but I don’t think I realized how bad. It’s not just that the people are ruled by an oppressive tyrant who keeps them in poverty while pursuing grand plans to create weapons of mass destruction. The even greater tragedy is that the people actually believe the lies they’ve been told for generations. They really think the world outside North Korea is worse, and they really think Kim Jong Un is a benevolent leader.

HYEONSEO LEE: We were captured in a huge virtual prison.

Even the defecting Koreans in the film struggle with their own actions, reluctant to say anything against the dictator who’s oftentimes responsible for the deaths of their family members.

The evil of the North Korean dictatorship becomes more stark when we see the religious aura it’s crafted for itself.

BARBARA DEMICK: North Korea has basically plagiarized the Christian Bible.

The founder of the dynasty Kim Il Sung supposedly was able to turn sand into rice like Jesus turned water into wine. The government teaches that he could also walk on water. The birth of his son Kim Jong Il was attended by a shining star. It’s no wonder the government wants to keep the Bible out of the country.

Both of these documentaries are worth watching, but Beyond Utopia gets my highest recommendation. It’s a powerful tale about a pastor who makes great sacrifices to rescue others from darkness, lies, and death.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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