Pebbles at Your Door

"If we all lived in paradise, there wouldn't be any tears or separation, no hunger and no waiting, no suffering and no oppression, no war, no death. We'd no longer need hope. We'd lose all those hopes we so dearly love. We Koreans call hope 'Han'." (Park Kyong-Ni)
Harmonia lived a happy life in North Korea, until one day in her early twenties when she realised the truth. A truth, she says, that she did not want to accept for many years: that which surrounds her is a fractured paradise. Late, but not too late she hopes, she sets out on the solitary path into the unknown, to the world beyond the narrow borders of the North Korean regime. She flees via China to South Korea. It takes almost a year before she arrives. She comes too late. But there is no returning. Director Vibeke Bryld uses photographs and postcards to piece together Harmonia's life. (Berlinale)