Folktales Review – Confronting the tyranny of social media as teens learn to live like hunter-gatherers | film

TPacific Folk High School in remote northern Norway teaches teens how to grow as young adults and escape the pressures of toxic social media by challenging them to get back in touch with their “stone age mind” and live like hunter-gatherers in the snowy wilderness. That’s the subject of a documentary by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. During the winter months of almost constant darkness, the teens clean themselves up with tasks like camping in subzero weather, making their own fires and driving husky sleds.

Before all this, of course, there’s supposed to be a solemn promise to give up their phones, tablets, and laptops, though there are no scenes of kids actually having to hand over these gadgets (this isn’t rehab, after all). They have to swim in icy water. And they make it look fun. What’s not fun is camping out, and there’s a tense moment when a whiny student is told that he can’t make use of his teachers’ campfires and will have to build his own. As for the hunting part, well, yes, they are hunting, although the moment of the kill does not appear on screen.

Many of the teens bring their own problems to school, the most important of which is certainly that of Heiji, who suffers from severe depression after the murder of her biker father. Other children have more ordinary fears, but they still have real concerns about fitting in and feeling happy. What seems to be the most therapeutic is their connection with dogs. As one teacher said: “You are more than good enough for this dog just the way you are.”