ANN reports that Eiji Han Shimizu, executive producer of Japanese publisher Emotional Content, known for biographical manga such as The 14th Dalai Lama and Che Guevara), has been working on a feature-length Japanese/Indian animated film based on stories told by survivors of North Korea's prison camps.
The film could possibly be released in 2012, though the project still needs funding.
This is the promotional content trailer for the story:
Tentatively titled "North", the premise goes around the repatriation program of the '60s, in which more than 93,000 Japanese Koreans left Japan to head to North Korea, which was promised by North Korean leaders to be "Heaven on Earth."
The main character's family was one of the families who took the voyage to this "Heaven on Earth," to dedicate their lives and wealth for the construction of what was meant to be the greatest nation, and that would promote communist idealism.
Relatively peaceful days in Pyongyang enjoyed by the family abruptly ended with the disappearance of the grandfather, and the main character's forced transfer toYudok concentration camp. Suffering through years of forced labor, violence, and the loss of loved ones, the main character grows to become a man from inside the concentration camp….
This could be an impressive story told with the dramatic realism of series like 'Band of Brothers', or even 'Schindler's List', and it wouldn't have nothing to envy it.