Oscar Hopeful ‘Beyond Utopia’ Takes Top Honors at Woodstock Film Festival 2023
variety.comAddie Morfoot Contributor Madeleine Gavin’s Sundance award-winning documentary “Beyond Utopia” has garnered the best documentary and best doc editing honors at the 24th annual Woodstock Film Festival.
The documentary, which was recently acquired by Roadside Attractions, is vying for Academy Award attention. Using hidden camera footage, the doc follows the high-stakes journey that a handful of desperate families make in order to defect from North Korea — a country with the most brutal regime on earth, led by a dictator, Kim Jong-un.
Doc jurors included directors Barbara Kopple (“Harlan County USA”) Richard Rowley (“ Kingdom of Silence”) and Heidi Ewing (“Jesus Camp”).“This year’s winner is an astonishingly intimate, white-knuckle thriller following families trying to escape North Korea,” the jurors said in a joint statement. “Stitched together from raw, first person footage, it is impossible not to feel the heart-breaking courage as a family clings to each other during a nighttime crossing of the Mekong River.
Or the anguish of a mother who may have led her only son into a horrific trap by trying to buy his way to freedom.”The five-day festival, which runs from Sept.
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