Escape from Mogadishu

A Korean film based on real events in Somalia. The year is 1990. Both Korean states have embassies in Mogadishu and both are campaigning for votes at the United Nations. They work against each other constantly, and the film opens on that pettiness: intercepted deliveries, bribes, staged incidents. Then the civil war reaches the city. The government falls, the phones go, the airport closes and the embassies are cut off with no way out. The North Korean staff are attacked and their building is lost. With nowhere else to go, they arrive at the South Korean residence at night and ask to be let in. From there the film is about two groups of people who are officially enemies sharing a house. The suspicion does not disappear. Nobody trusts anybody, food is measured out, and both ambassadors are thinking about what will happen at home if they are seen doing this. What the narrative is interested in is not politics but the practicalities: getting to another embassy, getting on an aeroplane, and what has to be said and not said to make that possible. The escape sequence is the strongest part. Cars packed with books and sandbags against gunfire, driving through checkpoints at speed. It was shot in Morocco, mainly in Essaouira, standing in for Mogadishu. Kim Yun-seok and Huh Joon-ho play the two ambassadors, with Zo In-sung as an intelligence officer. Ryoo Seung-wan directed. The film was a large hit in Korea in a year when cinemas were half empty, and was submitted as the country's entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature. Who it is for: anyone who wants a tense evacuation film with a real background. Who it is not for: anyone wanting nuance about Somalia; the Somali characters are almost entirely background.