On the Green Carpet was the first North Korean film to be invited to the Berlin International Film Festival, where it was screened in 2004 as a special one-off event. It had been chosen by the festival committee from a selection of ten films, and aroused a great deal of interest despite being shown without subtitles and with a German language-only voice-over. The predominantly German audience who saw the film later criticized it for its "Nazi-style propaganda". Sheila Johnson of FIPRESCI regarded it as a "rare and fascinating curiosity", but noted: "On the Green Carpet, with its flat, high-key lighting, functional editing and over-fondness for the zoom lens, could have been made forty years ago; although the subject might be superficially similar, it was executed with none of the technical brilliance of a Leni Riefenstahl movie."Johnson, Sheila. "North Korean Cinematography in Berlin: Rosy Picture Of Everyday Life" . FIPRESCI, 2004. Retrieved on 27 October 2008.
