Leofwine_draca A STATE OF MIND is an engaging little British documentary that follows the path of two young North Korean girls who are training to take part in regular 'games' held in that country, games that show off spectacular choreography and colour as a way to honour the country's leaders. The documentary is interesting because it shows the other side of the story, with cameras allowed inside the country so the viewers can witness real life there without the hyberbole.The documentary works because the focus is on real people, and you spend long enough with them to get to know and understand what drives them and how they feel. The glimpses of North Korean life we witness are often enthralling, and I particularly enjoyed the training sequences which show off some incredible acrobatic skills. We'll never know whether A STATE OF MIND tells the full story or not, but I'm left feeling sad that this country remains isolated from the rest of the world and unable to integrate on an international scale. North Koreans seem far from the bogeymen portrayed in western media.

TxMike Watched this as a Netflix streaming video.The nominal reason to make this documentary was to follow a couple of preteen age girl gymnasts who, along with thousands of other boys and girls, men and women, train daily for hours each day in preparation for the next Mass Games. They train with no guarantee that they will be chosen to perform. Their training even takes precedence over their classroom work.North Korea is a very insular society, the people have a god-like reverence for their leader, the General, and his dead father, the founder and former dictator who they consider lives forever. Part of the method is to foment hatred for the American Imperialism, which is taught from early childhood. This is reinforced at every chance they get. Adults sometimes spoke of the invasion of Iraq, which they are taught might be the same fate for North Korea.For those of us mostly ignorant of North Korea and its society, this film is a worthwhile viewing. What I noticed is the children are not too different from children all over the world, wanting to sleep late or watch TV instead of study, or even skip out of exercise class if they could. But the whole country, officials, parents, educators, are all so closely aligned in the mission of the country,that individualism must disappear in favor of the collective, the children end up following the destiny that is dictated for them.It made me think somewhere between that, and the excessive permissiveness in many societies, is a good balance where children grow up with appropriate freedoms but still with the right amount of discipline.

Rurik_Snorri This film does NOT show what ordinary North Koreans go through. It focuses on an a family of the communist elite in Pyongyang who by western standards are filthy rich because they actually have some rice and meat for dinner. Give me a damn break. In order to live in Pyongyang where this film was shot, you need to be a member of the communist party. You need to prove your allegiance to the communist party. In order to do that you will probably need to inform on other people who will end up in a gulag and will die of starvation, beatings, exposure or other privations, if you are not outright executed. The informant is a murderer by proxy.The film follows the lives of just such people. Some may be brainwashed. Some know exactly what they're doing. Some put decency to the wind and will do anything they can to survive. It's called dog eat dog. (No Korean pun intended). Of course this all throws in the question of how exactly a UK crew was given access to a completely closed society; a society that could violently collapse at the drop of a dime if it had more information to the outside world. Could it perhaps be that these dunderheads are actually sympathetic to the murderous regime of Jong-Il? All signs point to yes. At the very least they consider this just a 'different system' of life. Just like living in your own house with your wife and kids is 'different' from being in solitary confinement in a state penitentiary... at best.If the filmmakers had any integrity, heart, soul, or bravery they would have gone against all odds to expose the horrors that occur on a daily basis in this awful place. The concept of the so-called "mass games" as a tool for brainwashing - which is exactly its purpose - could have been shown for the sham that it is but instead is given a nice gloss-over in this rubbish film. The director's commentary on the DVD is the prize winner. He actually states something to the like of "I am just trying to show ordinary people in DPRK" and "it's just a different system". Well the Third Reich was a different system too.Please try to keep your eyes open people! Relativism in the face of abject evil will make you the first in line under the firing squad when the bullshit artists come to power.

td2036 The most interesting comment from director Daniel Gordon at the Tribeca Film Festival's screening of this movie was about the difficulties encountered in making this film, none of which came from state censors or anyone at all in North Korea. The most resistance came from Western entities (distributors, studios) that dismissed the film as inaccurate because it did not conform to their own notions of what life in North Korea was really like. The tone of this film, with the lives of two young gymnasts at its center, is straight-forward and unpreachy. Aside from brief glimpses of the obligatory posters condemning the U.S., masses in blue suits swearing allegiance to the socialist cause, and abundant references to the General, what we mostly see are the two girls and the intimate details of their lives, singing karaoke with their families, preparing for school in the morning, being chided for not eating their breakfast or doing their homework, and struggling through hours of exhausting gymnastic practice. There is also the spectacular, dizzying footage of the mass games, which alone would be worth the movie ticket. There was never the feeling that this is meant to be an "inside-look," even though the film does owe much of the fascination surrounding it to its subject matter. It was enlightening and entertaining to see what life is like in Pyongyang, but to approach this film as simply a bit of cultural curiosity is to miss the richer experience it offers, one that had me rooting and fretting for the two girls as they approach their final performance, and hoping that their wish to perform in front of the General comes true.