What's happening
Hana, dul, sed... is my first film, and before I got involved in this project, I had no intention of ever making a film. I just wanted to see a soccer match, but in North Korea, it's unthinkable to visit everyday places away from the staging of the omnipresent leader worship. So at some point, I casually said, "...someone should make a film about that!" Almost half a year later, I was on the set of this film myself, as director and producer.
In every department, starting with the camerawoman Judith Benedikt, who was the first to join in the adventure and, under the most abstruse conditions, was always careful and able to capture a cinephile image, to the editor Michaela Müllner, who was not intimidated by the masses of material but delighted in the exciting images from Judith's camera and never lost her sense of humor during the months of editing the story. From my co-director Karin Macher, who took on the difficult task of compensating for my lack of knowledge about directing and gave me the confidence that we would achieve this together, to the sound operator and sound editor Cordula Thym, herself a documentary film director, who discussed the film's themes and scenes with us in detail, contributing her own directing experiences, her doubts, and her confidence. From the title designer, Elisabeth Kopf, who developed the overall concept for the written information, scrutinizing every shimmer of a Korean letter and every blur of a pixel, to the Korean film collaborators, Ryom Mi Hwa and Jang Hyang Gi from the state-run film agency Korfilm, who handled the filming logistics and translation work on location and, for years, accomplished the feat of balancing the realities of Stalinist bureaucracy with the needs of the film crew from the capitalist West… everyone involved was a matter of course with the utmost professionalism, commitment, skill, and seriousness. They carried me through this project. In Q&A sessions, I often heard people remark with surprise that the film doesn't look like a first film. I have my team to thank for that, and this experience was even more wonderful for me than the result we achieved together.