{"id":322489,"date":"2025-12-02T09:52:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T09:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/322489\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T09:52:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T09:52:08","slug":"folktales-review-taking-on-tyranny-of-social-media-as-teens-learn-to-live-like-hunter-gatherers-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/322489\/","title":{"rendered":"Folktales review \u2013 taking on tyranny of social media as teens learn to live like hunter-gatherers | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pasvik Folk high school in remote northern Norway<\/a> teaches teenagers to grow as young adults and escape the pressures of toxic social media by challenging them to get back in touch with their \u201cstone age brain\u201d and live like hunter-gatherers in the snowy wild. This is the subject of a documentary from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. Over winter months of almost continuous darkness, the teens cleanse themselves with tasks such as camping out in subzero weather, making their own fires and driving sledges with huskies.<\/p>\n

Prior to all this of course is presumably a solemn promise to do without their phones, tablets and laptops, although there are no scenes of the kids actually having to surrender these gadgets (this isn\u2019t rehab, after all). They have to swim in icy water; and they make it look like fun. What doesn\u2019t look like fun is the camping out and there is one tense moment when a whingeing student is told that he cannot avail himself of his teachers\u2019 fire and will have to build his own. As for the hunting part, well, yes, they do hunt, though the moment of the kill isn\u2019t shown on screen.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Various teenagers bring their own problems to the school, of which the most important is surely that of Hege, who is deeply depressed after the murder of her biker dad. Other kids have more mundane, but nonetheless real worries about fitting in and being happy. What seems to be most therapeutic is their contact with the dogs. As one teacher puts it: \u201cYou are more than good enough for that dog just the way you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Folktales is in UK and Irish cinemas from 5 December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pasvik Folk high school in remote northern Norway teaches teenagers to grow as young adults and escape…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-322489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}