‘Bright Future,’ About Youth Festival in North Korea in 1989, Debuts Trailer as Syndicado Launches Sales at IDFA (EXCLUSIVE)

Syndicado Film Sales has boarded documentary “Bright Future,” which has its world premiere at IDFA. Variety debuts the trailer here. The film is the directorial debut of Romanian archive researcher Andra MacMasters.

“Bright Future” goes back to the summer of 1989 when thousands of young people from various nations gathered in North Korea for the 13th edition of the World Festival of Youth and Students. The festival, which championed peace, friendship and anti-imperialism, took place at a pivotal moment in history. The students “were dancing on the edge of a volcano,” as the film’s narrator states.

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In a statement, the director said: “In the last chapter of the Cold War, for one week, North Korea became the global meeting point for 20,000 people coming from 166 countries. The event was the space of the other, involving travel and contact with otherness, the creation of dialogue, of cohesion in the production of intellectual and affective links, of creative encounters and the transfer of information.

“As the world is on the brink of a new Cold War, I consider it vital to look back in history at the experiences of the previous generations of youth in facing the trauma of war. The complex infrastructures of international youth organizations that advocated for peace and solidarity have been forgotten or completely disappeared. At 35 years distance, it is time to reflect on these platforms that allowed youth to voice their opinion on world’s current affairs and build a more equitable society.

“I wish to make a film that seeks fresh takes on the past, with stories that bring visions of worlds that shatter the easy black-and-white categories of the Cold War and raise important questions about what it means to be young, international and in solidarity, then and now.”

The producer is Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan and the co-producers are MacMasters and KO Duhyun. The production companies are Manifest Film, Conset and Keumyoil Film.

Lazurean-Gorgan is the producer of “Acasa, My Home” by Radu Ciorniciuc, winner of the Sundance cinematography award in 2020, the documentary “Tata” by Lina Vdovii and Radu Ciorniciuc, recently selected at Toronto, and “Between Revolutions” by Vlad Petri, winner of the FIPRESCI award at Berlinale in 2023.