User Reviews

I saw this documentary at school and highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in issues of diaspora, ethnic cleansing, identity, and Russian/Kazakhstan history. The director nicely put together this 60 minutes documentary that commemorates a piece of history almost unknown to people other than Koryo Saram or the unreliable people according to Stalin. The film provides multiple perspectives from a fading and yet persevering community, mixing voices of both old and young generations. Forcibly relocated by Stalin's government from the Far East Russia to today's Kazakhstan in 1937, Koryo Saram suffered tremendous loss of lives, property, language, and identity (being robbed as felt by one of the interviewees). However, they survived and cultivated a new life, a new homeland and in time a tradition of their own. The film successfully conveys a sense of betrayal by one's own country (motherland) and ethnicity, posing a sharp contrast with the footages of Russian propaganda of ethnic harmony united behind Stalin.