Director

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  Álvaro Longoria

  Song of the Clouds, The Last Colony (2012) “The Propaganda Game” is a documentary film that brings the audience closer to North Korea, closer than they have ever seen it before, and all while depicting the fierce propaganda battle the country is currently going through, both internally and outside of its borders.North Korea, the most impenetrable country in the world, is deeply fascinating to most people. It’s the last bulwark of communism, the unpredictable, fearsome enemy, where devotion to its leader is almost religious, the country of impossible news stories…Since I started reading about the country, I noticed that the news related to it was always outlandish, improbable and surreal. Propaganda had to be the main character in our film. North Korea was indeed fascinating, but it was also the perfect environment for information manipulation on all sides.Ever since we produced “Comandante”, “Looking for Fidel” and “Persona Non Grata” with Oliver Stone, we had wanted to film a documentary in North Korea. It seemed an impossible task. Our multiple requests received no answer whatsoever. Then one day, I read about the only foreigner working for North Korea’s Government. It was a Catalan nobleman, a communist since his teenage years, who had become the unofficial North Korean ambassador: Alejandro Cao de Benós. I contacted him on Facebook and presented my idea. This time, I had my answer.After a year of negotiations, North Korea opened its doors but not without some conditions. The rules were: “You cannot go around on your own. You cannot deviate from the given itinerary. When we tell you to stop filming, you have to stop filming immediately. Otherwise, we will take away your camera and everything you have recorded. You cannot film any military facilities.”We agreed on these terms and in Spring 2014 my camera crew of two, Rita Noriega and Diego Dussuel, and myself, finally obtained a visa allowing us into the country. We filmed non-stop for ten days. Thanks to our host Alejandro, we managed to put our Korean guides more and more at ease and deviate from their strict itinerary of monuments and colossal constructions that hardly reflected the country’s reality, or any other country’s for that matter.We had the chance to interview citizens that we stopped on the street, and they looked bewildered and scared as they responded to our questions. They all tried to say the right thing. Many of them had probably never seen a foreigner before, let alone a film crew.After leaving North Korea, we interviewed several experts on the country as well as dissidents, journalists, human right activists and historians.The documentary is a road movie full of anecdotes and surreal moments; it analyses information and its manipulation, as it happens in North Korea but also in other fields on a daily basis.We also examine the implementation of propaganda. Not only as used by the North Korean Government on its own people and towards the outside, but also the agendas and interests that influence the information shown on international media when it comes to North Korea. Far from casting light on its “reality”, it seems clear that there are many different realities depending on who is reporting, how they are doing so, and how you listen to it. Ultimately, the purpose of this documentary is to provide information and testimonies —it is up to the audience to reach their own conclusions.​​