World Premiere | In Competition | White Mulberry Award Candidate | Closing film
Animation has the power to transport viewers to imaginary realms, to ancient civilizations, or to distant planets – anywhere the creator’s imagination wishes to go. The setting for
The Square is contemporary North Korea: a real-life location in today’s world, but one that is so inaccessible to most people, it may feel like an alternate reality. Made in South Korea by writer-director Kim Bo-sol,
The Square is a rare look at life inside the reclusive country, and the kind of film that could surely not have been made in North Korea itself.
Isak Borg is a Swedish diplomat who has been assigned to work with the ambassador in Pyongyang. As a foreign dignitary, he has his own apartment and leads a comparatively comfortable life. But North Korea is not the sort of country to let a high-profile foreign citizen like him go unmonitored. An impassive guard stands at the entrance to his apartment building, recording his comings and goings each day. Borg has an official interpreter named Myung-jun who assists him with daily activities, but a kind of wall exists between them. Borg tries his best to invite him over for a beer, or to give him small gifts, but he is always rebuffed. Despite the attention that follows him wherever he goes, it’s a solitary existence for Borg, highlighted by the film’s opening sequence of him pedaling his bike alone in circles around a gigantic, empty square.
Nonetheless in secret, Borg has made the acquaintance of a friendly traffic officer, and they have fallen in love. They meet in various corners of the city, and she pretends to be his official tour guide. At restaurants they sit at separate tables, sharing surreptitious smiles as they eat. Borg knows there will be consequences for her if she is found to be dating a foreigner, but his feelings for her run deeper by the day. With his posting in Pyongyang soon to expire, he applies to be reinstated for another year.
Told from Borg’s perspective,
The Square is an unusual but thought-provoking look at contemporary North Korea. Although it doesn’t comment directly on the political issues we most often associate with the country, it does intend to give the viewer a sense of life in an authoritarian, surveillance state. There is a particular kind of loneliness that exists in a society where strangers must be careful of how they interact with one another.
The portrait of Pyongyang that emerges in
The Square is centered around ordinary spaces such as the subway or outdoor markets, with famous landmarks usually relegated to the background. There is a realistic but intimate and luminous quality to the animation which is one of the film’s strong points. Director Kim Bo-sol may not have been able to visit Pyongyang to storyboard his film, but the visuals of the city are obviously well-researched, and feel convincing.
One twist to this story is that Borg’s grandmother who sends him care packages from Sweden is, in fact, Korean. At the end of the Korean War, prisoners of war in South Korea were given the choice of returning to the North, remaining in the South, or as his grandmother chose to do, settling in a neutral country. With his blonde hair, Borg doesn’t look one-quarter Korean, but his background has helped him to master the language, and made him feel closer to this nation which so obviously wants to keep him at arm’s length. In some ways,
The Square is a bittersweet story about identity.
Shot on a limited budget, and set in a nation where the director is not allowed to visit,
The Square is a film that favors empathy over ideology. So much of what we see and read about North Korea exaggerates and sensationalizes its subject, but this clear-eyed depiction is a welcome antidote.
GUEST:
KIM Bo-sol, director
OH You-jin, production designer
Kim Bo-sol
Kim Bo-sol graduated from Hongik University with a degree in film directing. He subsequently graduated from the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA), majoring in animation. He directed the short films
Home and
Unique Time before making his feature debut with
The Square.
FILMOGRAPHY
2025 – The Square