Who really knows anything about North Korea beyond its borders? Whatever we see or hear about this isolated land is always the same: Military parades with tanks and rockets; male and female soldiers marching like robots; threats of war and famine; obedient children; and three generations of dictators and their hysterically adoring followers. Award-winning filmmaker Sung-Hyung Cho pursues this question from right within its midst – in North Korea. 

My Brothers and Sisters in the North portrays the people behind the persistent clichés and stereotypes of a misunderstood nation and provides an in-depth look behind the garish façade of propaganda in a living environment that is usually inaccessible to us. The people encountered by the director on her journey through the country – engineers, soldiers, farmers, painters, seamstresses – are not chance acquaintances, they were chosen by the regime. Nevertheless, Cho approaches her protagonists with sincere interest, respect, and, most of all, devoid of any judgment. Thus appears a cheerful folk who, despite their often peculiar-seeming love towards their “leader,” have by no means given up on their dreams or the hope of reunification of both Koreas.