The Defector: Escape from North Korea Closes Sausalito Film Festival on May 19th

The Sausalito Film Festival has announced its closing film on Sunday May 19th will be the documentary The Defector: Escape from North Korea. Directed by Korean-Canadian Ann Shin, the documentary follows a North Korean defector named Dragon who helps smuggle North Koreans across political borders to obtain freedom from the oppressive North Korean regime. The Defector documents the specific escape attempts of Sook-ja and Young-hee, an attempt that runs into snags in China, a country where it is estimated that tens of thousands of North Koreans are in hiding. (North Koreans in hiding in China have been depicted in two films by Zhang Lu, Grain in Ear and Dooman River, both films that have been featured at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, now CAAMFest.) Director Shin will be in attendance for a Q&A after the 7pm screening at CineArts Marin Theatre in Sausalito, plus there will be a 9pm post-screening reception at Wellingtons Wine Bar also in Sausalito.

In the interim, you can go to the official website for The Defector – http://www.thedefectormovie.com/index.php – where there is an interactive documentary about the life of one of the defectors featured in the wider documentary – http://experience.thedefectormovie.com/

Also, for those who like to read topical literature before/after seeing certain films, Words Without Borders just posted a series of North Korean Defector literature that can be found here – http://wordswithoutborders.org/current-issue/

Finally, for more information on the Sausalito Film Festival running from May 17-19 – http://www.sausalitofilmfestival.com