Pebbles at Your Door

In evocative animations, pieced together by photographs and postcards, Vibeke Bryld opens the door ajar to the otherwise so closed-off upper class in North Korea. Bryld tells about Harmonia, who lives in happy political ignorance, but for whom reality is slowly making itself felt. The regime's censorship can no longer hide the pervasive poverty, and flyers are talking about the free life outside the North Korean borders. Her mother and sister fled the country when Harmonia was a child, and she now embarks on a trip away from her home country to find them in South Korea. 'Pebbles at Your Door' is the story of a gradual political awakening and liberation. But it is also the story of how the heightened awareness of a heavy-handed regime can make the entire basis of ones life collapse. As Harmonia is forced to come to face up to the political realities, she also challenges her entire past life. Bryld's meticulous animations, which slide in and out of focus, reenact exactly this slow maturing process, which oscillates between clarity and repression.