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CAMP 14 - TOTAL CONTROL ZONE

By Marc WIESE

Documentary - Completed 2012

This is the story of a man who was born and grew up in a Gulag-style North-Korean camp. After his escape at the age of 23, he discovered the “outside world” for the first time. The film relates his incredible story, as well as those of his fellow inmates and prison guards.

Festivals
& Awards

Festival de Cannes 2012

Doc Corner

Toronto - TIFF 2012

TIFF Docs

Warsaw FF 2012

Documentaries

- Year of production
- 2012
- Genres
- Documentary, Drama
- Countries
- GERMANY
- Languages
- ENGLISH, KOREAN
- Duration
- 104 mn
- Director(s)
- Marc WIESE
- Writer(s)
- Marc WIESE
- Cast
- Hyuk KWON, Oh YANGNAM, Shin DONG HUYK
- Producer(s)
- Axel ENGSTFELD (Engstfeld Film GmbH)
- Synopsis
- Shin Dong-Huyk was born on 19 November 1983 as a political prisoner in a North-Korean re-education camp. He was the child of two prisoners who were forced to marry by order of the wardens. He spent his entire childhood and youth in Camp 14, which was actually a death camp. From the age of six, he was subjected to forced labor, hunger, beatings and torture. He was always at the mercy of the wardens, and knew nothing of the world outside the barbed-wire fences. He thought everybody lived that way. With the help of an older prisoner, he succeeded in escaping at the age of 23. For months he journeyed through North Korea and China and finally to South Korea, where he encountered a world completely strange to him.
  Camp 14 – Total Control Zone portrays Shin’s dramatic life, with animated sequences also helping to bring Shin’s memories to life. Director Marc Wiese was able to get on camera the testimony of two former high-ranking North-Korean officers who were involved in the prison-camp system. Today Shin lives in South Korea. He collaborates with the human rights organization LINK and occasionally travels to international conferences. Yet he still does not feel at home in the free world; his soul is still imprisoned. Sometimes, when Shin is lonely, he wishes he could go back to North Korea and to the structured life inside the camp.

CAMP 14 - TOTAL CONTROL ZONE

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards