Hyde Park Pick: A New Kind of Wilderness

A New Kind of Wilderness captures the breathtaking landscape of a rural Norwegian forest and an idyllically harmonious family living in the wilderness. Photographer and filmmaker Maria Vatne documents her family’s life and she describes their sustainable way of living and how beautiful, but also scary, it can be. Suddenly, her narration stops as she tragically dies from cancer. But the story doesn’t end there as the family let another filmmaker, Silje Evensmo Jacobsen, into their lives.

Captain Fantastic (2016) left me fascinated by the family’s alternative way of living and the ethical questions making such big decisions for children raises. So, A New Kind of Wilderness, which has been described as a real-life Captain Fantastic was bound to captivate me and leave me thinking about it long after watching. And it has!

My friend says having to send her children (currently hypothetical) to school is her biggest fear. After not going to school for most of their lives, one of the children in A New Kind of Wilderness describes it as ‘prison’. The appeal of avoiding educational institutions is definitely an understandable one. While for some, schools bring amazing opportunities for connection, learning and growth, for others they’re a place of isolation where prejudices can manifest horribly and make it a challenging environment to learn in. So, while the film’s family is geographically isolated in rural Norway, perhaps one of the reasons they like the idea of homeschooling is to avoid a much uglier isolation that could come from not fitting in at school. It's also interesting to see how close and loving the bonds are in this family unit, maybe because they depend on each other so much, even working together to grow their own food. The children are incredibly thoughtful, caring and especially in the youngest (Ulv’s) case: very funny and wonderful to spend time with.

The film feels like a real gift for anyone curious about human emotions. It’s a rare chance to peek into a family home and see their ways of interacting with one of the most mountainous emotions of all: grief. Grief is incredibly complex and different for everyone. It’s maybe the emotion we wish we could somehow eradicate most, but there’s also real beauty that can be seen in grief and the enormity of love that causes it to feel painful. This is beautifully captured in the film with the lovely rituals of the family, for example, still writing and drawing cards for their mum and burning them after her death. Also, the very existence of the film feels like a very generous act of love for their mum as they let a camera intrude on their life in one of the most difficult times to allow their mum’s story to be captured after she began it with her own filmmaking of the family before she died.

If you think you can handle this bittersweet story without any cracks in your stony heart, just wait until you hear Daniel Norgren’s soundtrack! Tears will be unavoidable. However, don’t let the sadness put you off because not only is this lovely family a joy to spend time getting to know even while grieving, it leaves you with so many interesting ideas to think about including our relationship with nature and our environment; the complexities of family and morality of decision making as a parent; filmmaking and storytelling; processing grief and change. These and so much more!

A New Kind of Wilderness is showing at HPPH from Fri 13 Jun. You can book tickets here.