Naegohyangui cheonyeodeul

This two-hour drama from the DPRK tells a melodramatic story, but also sprinkles around some musical numbers and especially flute playing, so it does not feel that crushing. The film depicts a rural village in North Korea. People are happy and the girls are beautiful. Everybody loves music, as well as their country.

One of the girls is dating a soldier, who gets wounded when he saves a friend. This results in the soldier becoming blind. His girlfriend refuses to see him, which is of course very sad. However neither of them is the lead character of the film. Interestingly we are instead looking at the effect this rejection has on the community. The girls of the village get a bad rep, even though they explain that one shouldn't judge the whole village because of only one girl. Behind all the propaganda one would expect from a DPRK film, there is some interesting pondering about the chances of blind people finding a spouse in a small community, and about the expectations people have about marriage. The film is dedicated to all wounded soldiers and their spouses.

The visuals are nice, the songs were good, the length of the film was too massive, it was a bit preachy, a middle-of-the-road DPRK picture.