North Korean state television kicked off 2024 by airing the country’s first new film in half a decade, but even for DPRK audiences, it hardly seems that this derivative work of propaganda was worth the wait.

“A Day and a Night” (하루낮 하루밤) tells the supposedly true story of a nurse named Ra Myong Ju who uncovers and foils a plot to sabotage a steel complex and kill the country’s premier in 1958.

In this way, the film follows a trend of DPRK directors devoting renewed energy to depicting factional struggles in the Workers’ Party of Korea shortly after the