Film Trailer
Film Synopsis
The Fantastic is a film about encountering the unknown and the relationship between imagination and reality. The film is built on interviews with exiled North Koreans, who describe what they imagined the outside world to be like, based on their experiences of watching smuggled western fiction films.
Alternating documentary footage and visual effects, the film raises the question of how reality is defined and what we wish to believe in. The Fantastic reverses the set-up where westerners are peeping in on the everyday life of the closed-off state. In this film, it is the North Koreans who direct their curiosity at the outside world and imagine what life in Western countries is like.
Info box
Title: The fantastic
Length: 30 min
Genre: Documentary
Country of Origin: Finland
Completion Date: 2020
Director: Maija Blåfield
Film Stills
About the Director
Maija Blåfield is a filmmaker and artist from Helsinki, Finland, who moves between documentary film and contemporary art. Her films have been screened at festivals like Hot Docs and Visions du Réel and awarded at numerous film festivals. The films are as well exhibited in galleries and art museums like Kiasma and Frankfurter Kunstverein. She runs her own production company, Häivekuva.