When he was 11, Munya Chawawa and his family fled Robert Mugabe’s tyrannical regime in Zimbabwe and settled in Norfolk. That story was told in the comedian-actor-rapper’s 2022 documentary How to Survive a Dictator. It mixed satirical sketches into a series of interviews with Mugabe’s family members and victims; a former friend who finally dissociated himself from the dictator after Mugabe oversaw the massacre of 20,000 civilians; and even one of Mugabe’s most feared henchmen.
Against the odds, the format worked. Could it do so again without the personal element anchoring and protecting the presenter against accusations of flippancy or insensitivity? How to Survive a Dictator: North Korea answers the question largely in the affirmative.
