When the North Koreans aren’t conducting nuclear tests, they’re watching films like Baahubali, Krrish
While they’re not celebrating ‘successful’ hydrogen bomb tests, North Koreans are apparently watching Bollywood hits like Bajirao Mastani and Krrish.
The Pyongyang International Film Festival, which celebrated its first year of existence in 1987, has had a long history of screening Indian films. Their website - which compiles a list of films screened at biannual event - mentions Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Hrithik Roshan’s Krrish as having been screened at the 2014 edition (in the Informative Screening category), while Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone’s Ram Leela, and Sunny Deol’s Singh Saab the Great were screened in competition the same year.
“It is a very positive way of cultural engagement and showing North Korean citizens another view on the world,” Nicholas Bonner, a China-based filmmaker who helps “coordinate foreign films shown” at the festival told us through email. “The audiences love them,” he said.
The 2016 edition included an even bigger slate of Indian films. The Tamil film, Kanavu Variyam; Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Ram Leela follow-up, Bajirao Mastani; Akshay Kumar’s Gabbar is Back; SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali: The Beginning and Kangana Ranaut’s ‘Many Weds Manu Return’ (Google translate flummoxed, perhaps) were screened in the Informative Screening category. However, the obscure film, Ramsingh Charlie was the only Indian addition to the competition lineup.
The festival would like to screen more Bollywood and ‘Malayalum’ films, Bonner said, “however it has been very difficult in finding a sales company interesting in supporting a small cinema (sic).”
It’s still unclear how these films are sourced.
Bonner identified himself as one of the co-directors of a film called Comrade Kim goes Flying, a film the Toronto International Film Festival declares the first “Western-financed fiction feature made entirely in North Korea”.
According to a New York Times article published in 2012, Bonner “steered (the North Korean writers) toward comedy and away from the more predictable propaganda line of triumph through hard work.”