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Liberation Day

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Latvia, Norway, Slovenia · 2016
1h 40m
Director Morten Traavik
Starring Boris Benko, Tomaž Cubej, Milan Fras, Janez Gabrič
Genre Documentary, Music

Under the loving but firm guidance of an old fan turned director and cultural diplomat, and to the surprise of a whole world, the ex-Yugoslavian cult band Laibach becomes the first rock group ever to perform in the fortress state of North Korea.

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What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

67

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

Rather than spend more time with the band, Traavik tries to milk additional drama from North Korea’s diplomatic tensions.

50

The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck

The odd subject matter should have made for a riveting film, but, like many documentaries, Liberation Day (the title refers to the North Korean holiday celebrating the anniversary of the end of Japanese rule) feels both too short and too long.

60

The New York Times by Glenn Kenny

Liberation Day, a documentary of preparations for the concert directed by Mr. Traavik and Ugis Olte, is a consistently understated chronicle of Westerners who are very carefully playing with fire.

80

Variety by Guy Lodge

Billed as a “documentary musical,” this potential crowd-pleaser gets considerable comic mileage out of the friction between two very different brands of cultural eccentricity — but it succeeds as more than a diverting novelty, packed as it is with pointed observations on diplomacy and censorship in a country that’s still a mystery to many.

70

Los Angeles Times by Noel Murray

More detail about how this concert came to be — and what it means to both the performers and their patrons — would’ve made Liberation Day more illuminating, at least as a piece of journalism. But there’s a subtly meaningful power to what the film actually does.

80

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

The mystery remains: did the North Koreans get it? Did they not get it? Or did they choose a foggy condition of semi-incomprehension as the only state in which they could reconcile ideological piety with reaching out the hated west?

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