Go backBack to selection

“There Are No Good Harnesses, Clips and Clamps That Keep a GoPro on a Dog”: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady on Their Sundance Doc Premiere, Folktales

Two-shot of a white girl and a howling sled dog.Still from Folktales. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

For Jesus Camp and Detropia directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, a film can be born from the most inconspicuous of things, like something they have overheard, or a phrase that stayed with them. Folktales, their stunning documentary set in a folk school in the snow-clad Northern Norway, was no exception. During the early days of Covid, Ewing was catching the end of a podcast when American dog sledder Blair Braverman was talking about her vocation, as well as what happens to your mind when you’re alone for 12 days with a pack of dogs. As a dog and nature loving person, the idea intrigued Ewing. “I bought Braverman’s autobiography—she’d attended a folk high school and it had changed her life. We started looking into it and turns out, there are 400 folk high schools all over Scandinavia.”

The directing duo finally traveled to Norway in 2023 and started speaking with schools before choosing one. The main question to them was, “Who would go all the way to the ends of the earth, to the Norway-Russia border for a year? What are they looking for?” Another point of interest for them was the youth culture, having done films with young people at the center previously. Still, they saw this differently from the rest of their projects, given it follows around several GenZ students, a demographic the duo had not previously captured. On all accounts, the idea merited a cinematic investigation.

In the Premieres section of this year’s Sundance, Folktales primarily focuses three students — Hege, Bjørn, and Romain — as they slowly find their identities, while learning dog sledding and developing their voice and strength in the process. With countless adorable dogs, stunning sledding footage, and a deeply resonant human story braided with Norse mythology, Folktales is among my favorites of this year’s festival.

Here are Ewing and Grady on their film, through an interview wrapped with the filmmakers in Park City.

Filmmaker: Given there are hundreds of folk schools that are still operational, it feels almost like a miracle that no one attempted to tell this story before.

Grady: Absolutely. It was just a hidden gem of a story. When we were learning about the philosophy of the folk schools, we realized the whole intention is just to help a person build character and find purpose and meaning in their life, which is so foreign to an American mindset for what school is supposed to be. [In America], you’re learning to do something. But in this school, you’re learning to be someone. It mirrors the Scandinavian culture, which is more about the collective and community. We wanted to go to one desperately to be a student. The second best option was to make a movie.

Humanity is looking for a way to connect right now, because we just all separated from each other. And getting back to the dogs, the relationship you have with a dog is just pure. They don’t want anything from you. They just want to look into your eyes and tell you you’re perfect. And that affects people, gives them confidence.

Ewing: And as for the learning/teaching portion of it — you can be on your phone and have a chihuahua under your armpit. But you need two hands, two feet, and your entire body to handle a husky. It’s not a joke. These are major beasts that are demanding. And young people have to pay attention to someone besides themselves or there’s a lot at stake. Dogs can get stuck on the line, sometimes you have to cut the line. Sometimes they fight, sometimes the sled turns over and they’ll run off without you. So what a perfect type of animal to take your attention out of your own self.

Filmmaker: There is this saying that you aren’t supposed to shoot a movie with animals. What was the most unpredictable thing about these Huskies?

Ewing: Alaskan huskies are extremely strong. Even if they look small, they’re so muscular and demanding. They will jump on you to greet you and they can knock you over. I wasn’t used to the power. I was awestruck and it gave me even more respect for these creatures than I had before.

Grady: What surprised me the first time I saw it — and I love so much — is, when they’re about to go out running, they’re going crazy. They’re so loud. There’s like eight dogs going crazy. But the second they move, they are dead quiet. Honestly, when we were looking into the story, it was the first time I’d been near a dog sled. And I was like, “It feels like chaos.” And when it got silent like that, I was like, “We have to make this movie.”

Filmmaker: How did you pull of this shoot in such extreme temperatures? How did the equipment you used differ from your previous projects?

Grady: It was a lot of experimenting. We needed everybody to be clever and figure out ways to shoot a moving sled in the freezing cold and to be away from the kids because they didn’t want to be filmed as they were on a solo. They have to be alone. We had to just come up with lots of different things that we’ve never done before. Different lenses. Sometimes two or three cameras going at the same time to get everything we needed. It was a fun puzzle.

Ewing: We used the Sony FS6, because how strong it is in low light. There is several months of total darkness that we were filming in. We did a combination of Easyrig, gimbal, and sticks. We used the FX30 for the Gimbal, because it’s a smaller camera. We’re not a big on drones, but there’s such vast landscape and scope that it was appropriate in this movie. We mostly hover our drones. We don’t fly them, we use them as an anchor; a crane, basically. And we often had four GoPros going on the sleds. We would sometimes have a sound bag on a sled. So those sequences were extremely complex. It was negative 38 times Fahrenheit. Our drone kept falling out of the sky. We had to keep sending it back to Germany to be serviced. And they’re like, what are you doing to this drone?

Grady: It was under warranty. [laughs]

Ewing:  Also, there are no good harnesses, clips and clamps that keep a GoPro on a dog, because we wanted the dog’s, POV, we tried everything. Mostly nothing worked. So really, the six shots of the dogs’ POV you see in the movie are the best and only shots we got. A lot of times we were just using the kids’ headlamps. There was no other light source. So these parameters actually really ignited combustible creativity.

Grady: We had to use the longest lens we’ve ever used. It was like a safari lens,  1200mm, and we had an extender on it. And the kids at the school were not trying to be on camera. And they didn’t want microphones on them, they’re not looking for a lot of attention. So we got better stuff the further away we were. We had an incredible sound guy. And it was really hard with all the kids and barking dogs. And we’re right on the Russian border. So every channel gets blocked [by the military].

Ewing: We also had to give up on the lavalier microphones mostly. So we would pop little standup mics. Our sound man planted these little handheld mics everywhere. It’s one of our best sound mixes. Lewis Goldstein is an incredible artist and had a great time. It’s mostly production sound. There’s different kinds of wind. The snow makes a different sound when it hits a pine tree. There’s certain kinds of owls that only hoo at certain times in the Arctic.

Filmmaker: How did you decide on following these three kids mainly: Hege, Bjørn, and Romain?

Grady: They all seemed to have something that they were really trying to figure out about themselves. And in the first conversation we had with all three, we felt that they were so incredibly candid and vulnerable. Very intelligent and interesting people. The people we ended up focusing on were a combination of trying to figure out something very deeply about themselves and willing to share it with us. Their stories had to speak to each other. They don’t have the same story, but it’s a whole picture of what it’s like to be a 19-year-old right now in the world.

Filmmaker: The way you braid these kids’ stories with Norse mythology is so meaningful and rich.

Grady:  That was something that just came from the heart. It was a real organic process for both of us. We both felt this place held a lot of magic. I told Heidi, “Whoever wrote the Norse myths wrote them here.” On top of it, the [mythological] story itself that we have is a mirror of what the kids are going for. This idea of the past, present, future. And destiny. They were on the edge of adulthood and in this tiny sliver, where they’re neither in the past nor the present, they’re right there. All those things felt really profound, and we were seeing it happen to these kids.

Then we discovered the Tree of Life in the forest, the Yggdrasil. And I said, “Heidi, this is the Tree of Life.” It was a really amazing experience because these are things in your head that you might think are crazy, but I would say it, and Heidi would be like, “I was thinking the same thing.”

Ewing: From a filmmaking perspective, we felt like this mythological visual layer is not just a reminder of the magic in being a human being, but that there are other forces at work. And how do you show that visually? And there’s this very monochromatic forest with just a few colors in the winter. And that red thread, and winding it around the tree was so visually arresting and touching for us. 

Filmmaker: A line I love in the movie is around this philosophy of “awakening your stone-age brain.” I am wondering if this line of thinking affected you as filmmakers, and human beings.

Ewing: This really changed my life. I grew up climbing trees and being with dogs and being a tomboy. What I love the most is just to be in the dirt and to be outside. And it reminded me that that’s actually the natural way to live. So it’s a precious experience.

Grady: Being in a place that has no sound pollution rocked my body. My body could relax. My nervous system was just shocked by the fact that I am assaulted all the time by sound, by all the Input. Input. Until you have that reset, you don’t realize how hard it is on your body and spirit. Now, I look for peace and quiet. I need it. You can find it even in New York City. You just have to look for it. And you have to want it. You can find it in yourself and around you. I’m going to hold onto it because it gives me the clarity that I had lost.

© 2025 Filmmaker Magazine. All Rights Reserved. A Publication of The Gotham