Folktales

Returning from MIFF28!

Runner-up for the Audience Favorite Award at this year’s Maine International Film Festival. 300 miles above the Arctic Circle, Norway’s Pasvik Folk High School welcomes teenagers for a unique gap year. Far from the social and technological noise they experience at home, the school plunges students into nine months of arctic survival training, teaching them everything from hunting and making fires to dog mushing and Nordic folklore. Following three students, each overcoming something they’re struggling with in their own way, Oscar-nominated directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp, 12th and Delaware) capture everything from their fears of camping in freezing temperatures to the exhilaration of racing each other with dog sleds. By the end of the school year, it’s hard to imagine the students returning to their everyday lives, but as one of the teachers says, “to give yourself a dog, a fire, and a starry sky above you, remember: you can do what you want to in this life.”

"Modernity—with all of its progress and innovation—doesn’t provide the nourishment we need to move forward into meaningful lives. Technology, and its evangelists, would have you believe nothing in the past has value at all. Folktales suggests that finding the threads connecting us to our collective past is work of great healing and rejuvenation."—Sheila O'Malley, RogerEbert.com.

In English and in Norwegian with English subtitles.

Not Rated
1 hour 45 minutes
watervillecreates.org/shows/folktales

This film is eligible for the Youth Arts Access Fund. Call the Box Office at 207.873.7000 to obtain YAAF tickets.

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