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New York Times

‘Folktales' Review: A Bracing Education in Arctic Norway

At Pasvik Folk High School, where the curriculum revolves around Nordic traditions and survival skills, cellphones are not verboten, but eventually their lure subsides. What's a tiny screen got, after all, on the aurora borealis and a pack of gallant sled dogs? As the school's principal puts it, with impressive understatement, Pasvik, in the far northern reaches of Norway, offers 'a lot more than a gap year.' Focusing on three students and two dog-sledding instructors, the directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady chronicle a year at Pasvik — part of a Norwegian program that began almost two centuries ago — in their lyrical and intimate documentary 'Folktales.' The gifted teachers offer encouragement, wisdom and compassion, but never coddling. Students from around the world learn to hunt and build fires, to care for the Huskies and endure the monthslong polar night, all while navigating that poignant and charged phase on the cusp of adulthood. In interviews with the filmmakers, the students profiled — two from Norway, one from the Netherlands — are exceptionally forthcoming, describing the challenges they hope to overcome: acute social anxiety, difficulty making friends, intense grief. The most dramatic transformation is that of Hege, 19, a self-described 'big overthinker' who can't bring herself to pack fewer than four mascaras for her year in the Arctic, and who gradually stops longing for her 'fancy pillow' back home and embraces the wild beauty around her. Employing eloquent drone shots and macro footage, Ewing and Grady ('Jesus Camp') capture an almost abstract splendor in the setting. They thread a metaphor from Norse mythology through the film, and leave such prosaic matters as tuition costs unmentioned. There is poetry as well as deep affection in their close-ups of people and dogs, and lessons for any age in the way students tumble off their sleds and get right back up. FolktalesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters.