THE assassination of Kim Jong-Nam - the half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un - in broad daylight in KLIA on February 13, 2017 shocked the world in its brazenness and how it was carried out.
Two women, Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, 28, and Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25 year-old Indonesian, were the apparent perpetrators. They had smeared Jong-Nam with VX nerve agent in what they thought was a prank as part of a reality TV show.
Jong-nam, 45, died before he reached hospital. Reportedly estranged from his family, he had lived a few years in exile in Macau.
Both sons of previous North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il, but born to different mothers, Jong-nam was not close with Kim Jong-un, who has been supreme leader of North Korea since 2011.
Speaking to the BBC, filmmaker Ryan White was at first hesitant of making a film about the killing, despite the extraordinary circumstances.
Initially unfamiliar with the details, White found the defence by the two suspects unlikely, as they attempted to hold off the mandatory death sentence in court.
"It was only much later I started to think that what the two women were claiming sounded unlikely... but they were starting to convince me. Could they even be innocent?"
The size and scope of a three-act documentary came into shape, but would have been unlikely without CCTV footage.
For a long time, the police and other local authorities refused to release most of the material.
White won’t go into how he ultimately came in possession of the CCTV footage
The director won't say how finally the CCTV recordings emerged but they're an essential aspect of the movie.
"There were thousands of hours of footage to go through frame by frame - there were multiple cameras on everything. A small section is missing - otherwise we can account for every moment. We had to buy special burner computers to process all the DVDs - and we spent three months doing it."
Over the course of making the documentary, White met both the suspect’s families.
"But that was part of our trajectory of at first thinking that these women are probably lying. Then over a period of months I realised that what they were saying added up. But it was a very slow-burn revelation."
After being acquitted, Siti was released from custody in March 2019, with Doan being released two months later.
The highly secretive North Korea is known for keeping an eye on critics and exiles overseas - as the killing demonstrated - and White might have taken up their attention.
"There was a point last year when we had a premiere for the film and I was communicating with Doan through Facebook.
"But I realised that the angry messages she was sending didn't sound much like Doan and didn't even sound like the type of English she would use.
"So I messaged her on a different app and we realised that someone had been mimicking her Facebook profile in a very sophisticated way to communicate with me.
"Can I point a finger at the North Korean regime and say they were manipulating Doan's messages at that point? I can't know for sure but there were other instances where things like that happened." - The Vibes, February 9, 2021
Assassins is available on Dogwoof on demand and other streaming platforms
