The personal is inevitably political in the films of Yang Yonghi. As a member of Japan’s ethnic Korean community, the director was raised in Osaka by parents so loyal to the North that they sent their three sons to live permanently in Pyongyang in the 1970s.
Yang, who describes herself as more of an anarchist, has explored this atypical family history in a pair of documentaries, “Dear Pyongyang” (2005) and “Sona, the Other Myself” (2009), and a superb drama, “Our Homeland” (2012). She then seemed to drop off the radar: “Soup and Ideology” is her first theatrical release in a decade.
It’s an intimate, sometimes tender family portrait with some harrowing themes, in which the only neutral ground seems to be around the kitchen table.