Leningrad, one summer in the early eighties. Smuggling LPs by Lou Reed and David Bowie, the underground rock scene is boiling ahead of the Perestroika. Mike and his beautiful wife Natasha meet with young Viktor Tsoï. Together with friends, they will change the destiny of rock’n’roll in the Soviet Union.
Stas is a young third generation Koryo-saram, a member of the Korean minority in Central Asia that was deported from the Russian Far East by Stalin. He and his three friends Kasoy, Shin and Said try to escape from the grim life in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, and one day, they also try heroin. Then, however, Kasoy gets killed by a gang. 6 years later, Shin has emigrated to South Korea, Said has become a drug addict and Stas is now a police officer. Said commits suicide by overdosing and Stas, who has has since then also become a drug addict, decides to turn over a new leaf. He follows Shin to South Korea, but can this be Hanaan for him, the Promised Land?
The documentary starts with a diva of a tragic family history related to a history of migration. The rare archival footage reanimates her history reverberating with the current world crisis. Sound of Nomad: Koryo Arirang is a testimonial – a witness to injustice and tragedy, but it is also a declaration of survival – a survival that is not static but transformative – not brittle but fluid. The trains that displace, the deserts that separate form one harsh horizon – a historical limit – but within that limit, against it and across it are people, are a culture, not escaping but flourishing unofficially, with the affective majesty of a melody, a rhythm, an Arirang
