New Film Fund Bearing North Backs Stories About North Korea
A new private grantmaking initiative called Bearing North has launched out of Los Angeles, dedicated to funding independent films about North Korea. Founded by entrepreneurs and film investors Blaine Vess and Esther Paik Vess, the fund is now accepting applications from filmmakers worldwide at any stage of production — from early development through post — across documentary features, narrative features, and short films (Variety).
Bearing North has a stated preference for projects brought forward by North Korean defectors themselves. The fund describes its mission as supporting independent documentary and narrative films about North Korea, backing timely stories with what it calls "rigor, cultural depth, and urgency" (Bearing North).
The Vesses are not newcomers to this subject matter. They have previously supported North Korea-related documentaries including I Am Sun Mu, Assassins, and Beyond Utopia. Blaine Vess has also served on the board of Liberty in North Korea — a non-profit organisation focused on supporting defectors — for more than a decade (Variety).
The advisory group behind Bearing North mixes film-industry and policy expertise. It includes Matt Tyrnauer, director of the documentaries Valentino: The Last Emperor and Where's My Roy Cohn?; Anna Fifield, a journalist and author of The Great Successor, a book about Kim Jong Un; Joseph Kim, a North Korean defector and author of Under the Same Sky; Hannah Song, chief executive of Liberty in North Korea; and Sokeel Park, the organisation's chief strategy officer (Variety).
Bearing North's first supported project is School for Defectors, a documentary directed by Jeremy Workman. The film tracks students at the Jangdaehyun School in Busan, South Korea, an institution serving North Korean defectors and their families. Workman's previous credits include Lily Topples the World and The World Before Her Feet (Variety).
For independent filmmakers, the entry point is straightforward: grant applications are open at bearingnorth.com/grants. The fund does not operate as a traditional film financier taking equity or distribution rights — it functions as a grantmaker, meaning selected projects receive funding without ceding ownership stakes to the fund itself.
What makes Bearing North stand out is its narrow subject focus. Most film grants cast a wide net across regions or themes; this one is built around a single country whose stories are notoriously difficult to document, and it actively prioritises the people closest to those stories — defectors who lived them.
