Former LA Times correspondent Barbara Demick’s book about the lives of six citizens of the North Korean city of Chongjin, ‘Nothing to Envy’ is, according to former Reuters reporter Michael Rank writing in the Guardian, “moving and disturbing, and… surely tells us far more about real North Korean lives than a fleeting tourist visit to the Stalinist-kitsch theme park that is Pyongyang.”

Now, some two years after the book scooped up the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, London-based documentary filmmaker Mosaic Films hopes to turn it into an animated film, and through it to allow even more people to experience the way real life is in provincial North Korea.

Commenting on the choice of book, director Andy Glynne, who has also won a number of British awards for documentary filmmaking in the past, notes that its appeal lies in the fact that it covers “not only bleak tales of depressing events and harrowing statistics, but rather a narrative of interweaving stories covering themes that we can all relate to or empathize with; unrequited love, family politics, poverty, and triumph.”

“The result,” Glynne adds, “will be a film that is unprecedented in the way it can cast light on the lives of ordinary North Koreans, whilst telling an engaging and compelling story.”

The makers of ‘Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea’ are currently engaged in a crowdfunding campaign to raise $80,000 to launch the production process. More information is available here