Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady cemented their reputation for tender portraits of young people blossoming away from home with their earlier films The Boys of Baraka, Detropia and the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp.
With Folktales, the veteran documentary duo return to familiar thematic terrain with renewed compassion. Set 300km or so inside the Arctic Circle, at Pasvik Folk High School in Norway, the film follows three teens on the anxious verge of adulthood: Hege, who is grieving her violently killed father; Romain, a Dutch high-school dropout struggling with acute social phobias; and Bjorn Tore, a self-identified nerd uncertain of how to connect.
Ewing and Grady’s gift for building trust is evident throughout, particularly in intimate check-ins where the teens speak not to the camera but to an unseen listener behind it, revealing the fears and desires that brought them to this unusual nine-month retreat.
The geography of Pasvik makes for arresting tableaux. Sequences of dog-sledding across blue-tinged frozen fields; building campfires under the aurora borealis, snowfields framed by dark and ancient trees; and tending to the school’s boisterous animals offer both visual adventure and lots of feels.
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The huskies themselves, imported from Russia and endowed with distinct personalities, become nonverbal catalysts for change. With every happy bound or wagging tail, they steal each scene they’re in. When Hege learns of the illness of her favourite dog, Sautso, she processes the grief she fled to the Arctic to escape.
These intimate observations are framed with local mythology, drawing on Norse tales of goddesses who spin the threads of fate. In the stirring words of one devoted instructor, “Be bold. Open doors. Turn around if the weather is bad” – a handy phrase that is both life lesson and punch-the-air denouement.
In cinemas from Friday, December 6th
