Three Gen Zers leaves his phones behind to find themselves – in Norway, like rookie dogs – in Heidi Ewing and Rachel GraduS lovely documentary ”Folk. “The latest non -fiction film From the Oscar-nominated “Jesus Camp” which directed the duo premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2025, where Magnolia Pictures scooped up for a domestic edition. “Folk“Opens in New York on July 25 from Magnolia Pictures, with dates in Los Angeles and more cities to follow from August 1, and IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer premiere below.
“Folktales” centers on teenagers who converge at a Norwegian primary school in the split year between high school and college and with sled dogs on trailers to help them at their existential age. The documentary filmmaking behind “Boys of Baraka” embedded this time in the Arctic wilderness, to chronicate the charismatic and anxious Hege, Romain and Bjørn. It is another likely Oscar challenger, an audience-comparable doctor who will play well into the fall distribution season.
Per Magnolia’s Description, “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 Northern Norway Aims Aims Life Life 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, hoping to find connection and meaning in the modern world controlled by patient teachers and a farm full of heroic alaki, the Disserty -Hovus, land, animals and people around them.
“We filmed six or seven people before school started, secured our efforts, just meet people and go to their homes,” Ewing told IndieWire back at Sundance. “These three individuals all had something they were looking for, a specific reason why they would go to folk high school. They had the way to travel. They were looking to change. We thought (these three) had the highest chance that they might be different at the end than they were in the beginning.”
As for the 400 primary schools throughout Scandinavia that the filmmakers had to limit, “It is a tradition in August in Scandinavia. It’s a ritual,” Ewing. “Not everyone focuses on the natural world or survival. You can study circus art or Viking life. We were interested in those who focused on survival and bushcraft and dog spite.
As IndieWires Kate Erbland wrote in his review“The Hege, Bjørn Slet and Romain will learn some major life lessons from Pasvik in general and these puppies are expected in particular, but it is not a given. Instead, we are treated with all joy and pain for ten transformative months, with Ewing and Gradu that takes us into an experience that is both specific and strangely universal. Not everything turns out as we expect, not every story has a nice end, but no one ever said to be a new I was easy or expected. People High School? It helps. And yes, I would still like to go. ”
Look at the trailer for “Folktales” below before Magnolia Pictures launches the film on July 25.
