FOLKTALES - Mark Reviews Movies

Folktales, Magnolia Pictures

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | July 24, 2025

Above the Arctic Circle in Norway, there's a school that essentially teaches the basics of outdoor living and survival. Its existence is primarily for young adults, who might not be able to afford or want to attend university but who aren't quite ready to enter the uncertain world of adulthood. That such schools, focusing on assorted areas of study, are prominent throughout the Scandinavian countries and other parts of Europe, as well as the fact that they're free for those young people, should give one a sense of those countries' priorities when it comes to education. Some politicians and government officials in other countries with different priorities could learn a thing or two from this model.

These folk high schools, as they're commonly called, aren't the center of focus in Folktales, a documentary by directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, so we'll leave that aside for the moment. However, this story of a trio of young adults figuring out things about themselves and what they want from their lives couldn't exist without this system.

We meet these young people, who are either 18 or 19 when they enroll in the Pasvik Folk High School, at difficult times in their lives. We watch them confront their worries and troubles, find some level of peace within their minds, and figure out what they want to do with their lives over the course of a school year. Some people spend four years at a college and years or maybe even a decade or more struggling with such personal and professional challenges. Obviously, these three stories can't be wholly representative of the experiences and outcomes of a folk high school, but the film is still compelling evidence that caring about education and how to best make well-rounded adults through learning are vital goals.

It helps here that these three young adults, as well as their classmates, get to spend a lot of time with dogs. Part of Pasvik's curriculum includes lessons in dog sledding or mushing, as they refer to the practice. These dogs aren't pets, because they belong to the school, but they aren't just working animals, either. The mushing teachers encourage their students to develop a bond with one particular dog during each student's time at the school, and whether it's intentional or not, our three students seem to connect to dogs that will help them with some part of their life.

That may simply be the case with Hege, a 19-year-old Norwegian woman, who comes to Pasvik after her father was killed after a random argument turned violent. She's still grieving, of course, and wrestling with the idea that her life will go on, even after losing her father to such a senseless act.

The dog she chooses or, perhaps, that chooses her is an older one—kind and quiet and almost looking as if it possesses some kind of wisdom in its big eyes. The way their story unfolds through the school year might seem like too much for Hege take, and it might have been, perhaps, before and shortly after the young woman arrived at the school. The dog changes her in some way, as does her broader connection to the outdoors. It's something she shares with her father now, even though he isn't there to be part of it directly.

These classes and learning adventures might seem like lonely affairs, and sometimes, they are. Hege and the other students do have to spend days and nights in the woods alone with their respective dogs, for example, to ensure that they can build a fire, set up some temporary shelter, and obtain necessary resources from the land. They don't have their cellphones, by the way, but by the time the students are in the wilderness, they don't miss the constant scrolling through social media, either.

Their classmates and at least one teacher are always nearby, though, which comes in handy when Romain, a young man from the Netherlands, realizes he can't make a fire. It's not that his fellow students or teacher will make one for him, but they do make it clear to him why he has to figure it out on his own without any direct help.

Romain has his own issues, most of them having to with social anxiety. He's convinced that people find him annoying when he talks and boring when he stays quiet. Compared to Hege's story, this might not appear as significant a problem for someone to have, but it is to Romain. The filmmakers let us see and hear how it is, and there's something quite encouraging about how his classmates listen, don't judge, and try to help him understand exactly how those worries exist only in his own head.

Romain's experience is somewhat similar to that of Bjørn Tore, another local, who's enthusiastic about things and, unlike his classmate, outgoing. Bjørn Tore, though, also worries that others find him irritating because of those qualities. When the two become friends after a long period of not even seeming to know that each other existed, it's as if they've known each other for years.

The film is full of those little moments of bonding and self-realization. It's also, of course, filled with beautiful scenes of hiking and sledding through the Norwegian wild, where the sun disappears for a lengthy stretch of time and finally emerges along with these students' new appreciation for a life connected to nature, each other, and their dogs. Folktales simply observes and allows these young people to speak for themselves, and their transformations are genuinely inspiring things to witness.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products