One of the most highly anticipated local releases of the fall, My Dictator marks the returns of Castaway on the Moon (2009) filmmaker LEE Hae-joon and sees him team up with a group of notable thespians, including SEOL Kyung-gu and PARK hae-il as the father and son core of the film’s narrative.

 

In the 1970s, a struggling actor finally gets his chance to shine on the stage when he is asked to fill  in for a play’s leading man. However, he freezes up in the moment, to the disappointment of his son and mother. Yet soon he gets a special audition and is surprised to make the cut. But rather than a practice hall, his finds himself tortured in a detention center. Secret agents are indeed preparing him for a role of a lifetime, he must turn himself into North Korean Dictator Kim Il-sung.

 

20 years later, his grownup son gets into trouble with money lenders and needs his father’s house to make up the debt. He visits him in an institution, where he is now an old man who still believes himself to be the North Korean despot.