SYNOPSIS
Liberation Day. When North Korea invited the first foreign rock group ever to perform there, for its 70th Anniversary Liberation Day celebrations, who do you think they chose, was it The Rolling Stones; U2; Pink Floyd maybe? No to the surprise on the whole world they chose Slovenian art-rock group Laibach.
Now in a mind-boggling, eye-opening new feature documentary, Liberation Day, from Norwegian director Morten Traavik and Latvian director Uģis Olte we get to experience what happens when cult band Laibach, from former Yugoslavia, become the first rock group ever to perform in the fortress state of North Korea. The film is set for available exclusively on iTunes from 17 July 2017 thanks to Dogwoof.
Hailing from the then Yugoslavian town Trbovlje, and founded in 1980, the death year of the country’s founding father Tito, Laibach rose to fame as Yugoslavia steered towards self-destruction, and are still the most internationally acclaimed band to have come out of the former Communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Making songs in their own inimitable, industrial style with cover versions ranging from The Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil, to Europe’s The Final Countdown, via Opus’s Live is Life to songs from The Sound of Music, self-defined engineers of human souls, Laibach can make you think, dance and march to the same music.
Liberation Day sees the band confronting strict ideology and cultural differences, as they struggle to get their songs through the needle’s eye of censorship before they can be unleashed on an audience never before exposed to alternative rock ’n’ roll. Meanwhile, propaganda loudspeakers are being set up at the border between the two Koreas and a countdown to war is announced.
The hills are alive… with the sound of music.
