What did you do during your gap year from school? I’m betting it wasn’t nearly as extraordinary as the three teens in Folktales, the heartwarming documentary from Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. The doc premiered earlier this year at Sundance and I’ve been kicking myself for missing it. Thankfully, I can rectify that error next month thanks to Magnolia Pictures which acquired the rights during the festival. I just love that promo image they’ve been using since January. They just look so happy, both the woman and her dog.
Folktales centers on three folk high schoolers in Norway who embark on an existential journey with a pack of loyal sled dogs. A folk high school is a learning institution that offers adult education through experiences rather than traditional coursework. Certainly in this case, these students had the experience of a lifetime.
SYNOPSIS: In Oscar®-nominated filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s life-affirming documentary, teenagers converge at a traditional folk high school in Arctic Norway where they must rely on only themselves, one another, and a loyal pack of sled dogs as they all grow in unexpected directions.
In Norse mythology, the three “Norns” are powerful deities who weave the threads of fate and shape humans’ futures. Today, Pasvik Folk High School in northern Norway aims to produce a similar life-changing effect on its students. FOLKTALES tells the timely and heartwarming story of teenagers who choose to spend an unconventional “gap year” learning to dog sled and survive the Arctic wilderness, in hopes of finding connection and meaning in the modern world. Guided by patient teachers and a yard full of heroic Alaskan huskies, they discover their own potential and develop deep relationships with the land, animals and humans around them. Through intimate verité storytelling and exhilarating cinematography, Ewing and Grady examine humans on the cusp of adulthood, finding themselves at the edge of the world.
Folktales opens at IFC Center in New York on July 25th, before rolling out to Los Angeles and other cities on August 1st.
