The Most Inspiring Film at Sundance Is About… Norwegian Dog Sledding

PARK CITY, Utah—Hundreds of miles above the Arctic Circle near the Norway-Russia border, Pasvik Folk High School welcomes teenage boys and girls for a unique “gap year” in which they learn about themselves through wilderness survival training and dog sledding. FOLKTALES, the latest from documentarians Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp, One of Us), shines an inspiring spotlight on this most unconventional educational outpost, focusing on three kids as they wrestle with their pasts, their demons, and their fears via arduous and enlightening challenges. With formal polish and deep compassion, it is the most heartwarming film of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Norwegian 19-year-old Hege believes that being a young woman is “chaos,” and to escape that mayhem—full of clubs, parties, and endless social media scrolling—she takes a chance and enrolls at Pasvik. An additional part of Hege’s motivation is that, in the aftermath of her father’s recent, tragic death, she’s lost and in search of guidance.

For fellow Norwegian Bjørn Tore, the school is a way to cope with loneliness and self-loathing; as he candidly admits to the camera, most people consider him “nice” but “annoying,” and he generally agrees with that assessment, as does his father, who on a phone call counsels his son to avoid being too irritating. Dutch high school dropout Romain, meanwhile, is beset by crushing doubt and insecurities, and at the outset of the term, he appears to be the most unsure of Ewing and Grady’s chosen centers of attention.

Pasvik is led by dog sledding instructors Thor-Atle and Iselin, and as incoming students are informed, their forthcoming experience is designed to help them find “a new version of yourself.” To do that, each teen is paired with one of the numerous Alaskan huskies in the “dog yard.”

The bonding process between human and canine is, at least for Bjørn Tore, an initially tricky one, but the purpose of these pairings is to give these wayward kids a partner for whom they’re responsible, and who in turn accepts them for who they are. At the same time, regular trips into the surrounding snowy terrain affords opportunities to build fires, erect camps, and brave frigid temperatures which, during one two-day excursion, plummets at night to a frosty -3 degrees.

Ewing and Grady take a fly-on-the-wall approach to documenting the threesome as they navigate physical ordeals and emotional trials. Simultaneously, they embellish their non-fiction material with aesthetic flourishes, beginning with narration about an ancient Nordic myth concerning Odin visiting three fates known as “Norns” that weave individuals’ destinies with thread around the Tree of Life.

This ancient tale is about pain and perseverance, and along with the directors’ evocative montages of fire and ice, sun and darkness, and man and beast, it infuses the film with a fairy-tale quality. Furthermore, it suggests links between the past and the present that are pertinent to Hege, Bjørn Tore, and Romain’s plights, as all three are struggling to figure out how best to transition from childhood into adulthood.

The start of the school year is rocky, with Hege pining for home (and her posh bed pillows) and Romain petulantly asking Thor-Atle and Iselin for assistance with building his fire in the frigid forest. Their complaints and unhappiness aren’t met with tough-love criticisms and demands for compliance but, rather, with encouragement and support, and things slowly turn around for Hege, who discovers that she has both a fondness and knack for this sort of outdoor work. Bjørn Tore similarly comes into his own, bonding with his dog Billy and striking up a tentative friendship with Romain. Unfortunately, the Netherlands native has a rough go of things, bristling at Pasvik’s curriculum and beating himself up over every small setback. At the end of winter break, he doesn’t return.

FOLKTALES nonetheless soldiers onward with Hege and Bjørn Tore, providing up-close-and-personal snapshots of their difficult and wild times, as well as their regular outings on their dog-powered sleds, which Ewing and Grady shoot from a variety of angles, including from the pooch’s POV.

They complement such intimacy with stunning panoramas of this majestic environment, highlighted by an aerial drone shot that captures the sleds carving a path through the glacial landscape—a sight that subtly speaks to the figurative odyssey embarked upon by these kids. Hearteningly, it’s not long before Romain reappears with a newly positive attitude about Pasvik, explaining in an interview that he knew for certain that he missed the place once he was home and surrounded by miserable people at miserable jobs trying to impress people they didn’t like.

Frozen lake jumping, shirtless snowball fights, and additional hijinks ensue, with Hege, Bjørn Tore, and Romain blooming into more assured and content young adults. Graduation is filled with smiles and tears over obstacles overcome and lessons learned, and once home, acclimation to old environs isn’t merely sunshine and roses, particularly for Hege, who realizes that she no longer belongs there and doesn’t want the misery of striving to fit in—a notion implied, movingly, by a scene in which she weeps over the fact that, because of gained weight, she can’t squeeze into her traditional “bunad” dress for Norwegian Independence Day. Ewing and Grady convey such notions visually and editorially, just as they tap into a sense of these kids’ relationship to Nordic (and human) history through routine visions of red threads winding and unwinding around tree trunks and branches.

FOLKTALES is another of the filmmaking duo’s stories about insular communities and the means by which they shape—for worse or, in this case, for better—their impressionable young inhabitants. What Hege, Bjørn Tore, and Romain get from their tenure at Pasvik is not simply confidence and companionship but a measure of self-sufficiency; by making them capable of standing on their own two feet, the school shows them how to forge meaningful and lasting bonds with likeminded souls.

Finally, in its where-are-they-now coda, the doc reveals that they’re all still on a journey of self-discovery, yet with a clarity and purpose that can be directly traced back to their time in nature and with a collection of dogs whose love was nothing short of empowering.