You were listening to The Next Best Picture podcast, and this is my interview with the director and editor for Beyond Utopia, Madeline Gavin.

Imagine waking on one day and realizing that you were born on a completely different planet.

And everything you learned was live, and the heroes you worship were actually monstrous villains.

In North Korea, there is no freedom of religion,

there is no freedom of thought, there's no freedom of press.

The regime polders, we are living in utopia,

but we are captured in a huge virtual prison.

Sometimes people will die through torture and there's no recourse.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Next Best Picture podcast where I am being joined right now by the director of the documentary film Beyond Utopia.

Madeline Gavin, Madeline, how are you today?

I'm good. I'm good. Who are you? I'm doing

really well. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to talk to me about this really incredible film.

I saw it at its world premiere at the 23 Sundance Film Festival, and I have not stopped raving about it

ever since. I've still maintained nearly

300 films in this year. This is my favorite documentary of the year. Wow, that's, I'm honored.

That's amazing. So I want to first start off by asking, because you're attempting to tell a story

that has a tremendous amount of scope here.

You have to educate the audience on the conditions that are taking place inside North Korea,

an area that so many of us do not have visible access into to really fully understand.

So how do you start the research process first and foremost and

set the stage, if you will, before we start getting into following certain people throughout

the documentary? I mean, I started the research process for this by just going totally in, you know, doing a deep dive in every

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