New Film Fund Launched for North Korea Documentaries

A new private grantmaking initiative dedicated to films about North Korea has launched from Los Angeles, featuring an advisory board with ties to documentary filmmaking, journalism, and human rights activism.

Bearing North, founded by film investors Blaine Vess and Esther Paik Vess, aims to provide grants to independent filmmakers worldwide, regardless of their production stage. The initiative is set to support documentary features, narrative films, and short films, placing a special emphasis on projects proposed by North Korean defectors.

The founders have significant experience in this area; Blaine Vess has been involved with Liberty in North Korea for over a decade, and the couple has previously funded documentaries related to the country, such as “I Am Sun Mu,” “Assassins,” and “Beyond Utopia.”

“Some of the films that have most shaped how we understand history arrived decades after the events they depict,” Blaine Vess noted. “We created Bearing North because important stories about North Korea are unfolding now, while the people who lived them, the places where they happened, and the perspectives surrounding them are still within reach.”

The initiative’s advisory group features notable figures, including Matt Tyrnauer, director of “Valentino: The Last Emperor”; journalist Anna Fifield, author of “The Great Successor”; North Korean defector Joseph Kim, who wrote “Under the Same Sky”; Hannah Song, CEO of Liberty in North Korea; and Sokeel Park, the organization’s chief strategy officer.

Bearing North’s first supported project is “School for Defectors,” a documentary directed by Jeremy Workman that focuses on students at the Jangdaehyun School in Busan, South Korea, which serves North Korean defectors and their families.

“North Korea is often reduced to headlines about missiles and politics,” Blaine Vess stated. “Great filmmakers have the ability to show us something much harder to capture: how ordinary people live, hope, adapt, and endure.”

Grant applications are now open for those looking to tell stories about this critical and often overlooked subject.