How can a nation of nearly 24 million people hold up one of the world's most infamous despots as a hero? In most of the world, Kim Jong-Il, president of North Korea, is either feared or despised; he's displayed an open willingness to use nuclear weapons on his enemies, free speech and other basic human rights are all but unknown under his rule, and while a tiny handful of people enjoy wealth in North Korea, a famine claimed the lives of over three million in the nation in the 1990's, with little improvement since. But at home, Kim Jong-Il is all but worshiped by the vast majority of his subjects, who celebrate him in song and legend, and one admirer has even bred a special begonia in his honor, named "Kimjongilia" and said to celebrate "wisdom, justice, love and peace." Dancer turned filmmaker N.C. Heikin examines both sides of Kim Jong-Il's public persona in the documentary Kimjongilia, which compares and contrasts interviews with South Koreans who speak with awe and admiration of their president (alongside unintentionally comic state-produced propaganda films) with shocking testimony from South Korean exiles who suffered at the hands of Jong-Il's police and spent years in his prisons. Kimjongilia received its North American premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.