North Korea is a land of hunger, torture and indoctrination. It’s crushed under a cult of personality so punitive that citizens can be imprisoned if inspectors find any dust on the household portrait of supreme leader Kim Jong Un. Yet an 80-year-old grandmother who’s one of the central figures in the documentary “Beyond Utopia” is convinced it’s the best country on earth. A lifetime of brainwashing has her praising the Kim dynasty even as she and her family flee what they fear it’s going to do to them.
The grandmother is the oldest in the Roh family, whose harrowing overland journey from North Korea to Thailand provides the spine of director-editor Madeleine Gavin’s engrossing film. Also on the arduous trek are the woman’s daughter and son-in-law and their two young…
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