Obviously, the funnest part of the job of being dictator-for-life is the construction of an alternate reality where even your wackiest ideas must make sense. Few despots have proven better at this than the Kim Il-sung/Kim Jong-il tag-team of North Korea, who at one point were able to convince a starving population to eat their own children – a rather impressive example of Papa Kim’s ‘Juche’-ideology, which holds up self-reliance, persistence and innovation as the keys to attaining his Confucian-Stalinist nirvana.

Meanwhile, the younger Kim, a noted cineaste, has taken it upon himself to apply the Juche ideals to film theory and film practice, and here, the ever-subversive director Jim Finn takes him at his word, constructing a narrative from footage of North Korea’s spectacular propaganda rallies – eat your heart out, Leni Riefensthal! – and a story almost based on real events. ‘Almost’ is the key word here, of course, since the line between fact and fiction usually is the first victim of any revolution.

Sindre Kartvedt