‘A New Kind of Wilderness’ Director on How She Turned a Living-Off-the-Grid Doc Into an Exquisitely Heartbreaking Story of a Family
In 2014, filmmaker Silje Evensmo Jacobsen became fascinated with a Norwegian photographer’s blog. The blogger – Maria Vatne – visually captured how she and her British husband, Nik Payne, raised and home-schooled their four bilingual children off the grid on a Scandinavian farm.
“I admired her, as the family represents a lifestyle and mindset that I found inspiring,” says Jacobsen. “(Their lifestyle) wasn’t easy, far from it. It involved hard work and many battles, but it was a fulfilled life and a rush of freedom in it.”
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Initially, the director wanted to make a Norwegian television docuseries that captured Vatne and her husband’s unorthodox lifestyle, but that never came to fruition. For the next few years, the project was put on hold. Then, in 2019, Jacobsen discovered that Vatne had been diagnosed with cervical cancer, which would kill her in less than a year. In spite of Vatne’s death, Jacobson says that she “felt this urgency” to capture Maria’s world visually. “For me, the best way to do that was to show her story through her family, her children, and their way of life — but now also with a deeper dimension — how they coped after such a huge loss while making sure Maria’s spirit lived on through her photos and stories.”
The result of Jacobsen’s pressing desire is “A New Kind of Wilderness,” an 84-minute visually beautiful and emotionally turbulent documentary that made its world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The film, which won the Sundance World Documentary Grand Jury prize, is a tender observation of an evolving family burdened with grief and shifting ideals.
Variety spoke to Jacobson prior to the docu’s New York premiere Friday at the DCTV Firehouse.
This doc has so many layers. It’s about this unique, idyllic life Nik is trying to maintain after his wife’s death, but it’s also about universal subjects like grief, parenting, blended families, loneliness, etc. Going in, was it your intent to touch on all of these topics?
Jacobsen: Yes, because it was a film about humanism. It’s a film about human relationships and family relationships, so yeah, I think I knew. But for me it was the unique process that the family was going through as well. All of the changes. Also, it was about parenting and being a parent and making decisions for your children and how you don’t know what’s right all of the time. So, I saw the film in all of its layers when I started, but I didn’t know how it would (turn out). I just had this idea, and I knew that I wanted Maria’s photos and stories to be a part of it.
You weave together Maria’s vlogs with the present day seamlessly. I’m assuming Maria made a lot of videos. Did that make the edit challenging?
We had a lot of versions that had more of Maria in it but my editors and I found that if you are going to take her in, it needs to reflect on the present life. So, her voice from the past needed to reflect on what we see in the present time. That was our mantra, or like the Bible, we went through when editing. We removed so many nice places where Maria could go in. We wanted only what was necessary to be part of the story.
You began filming Nik Payne and his children not too long after Maria died and continued to shoot with the family for the next three years. How did you gain their trust, especially at the beginning of filming when Nik and his children were heavily grieving?
It was hard. It’s hard to be filmed, and it’s hard to be filmed over time, especially when it’s so personal. In the early days, when we were filming the family they were like, “We don’t know about this.” They were (unsure) if they wanted to continue filming and I would be really stressed. But after some time (I realized) that they also put a lot of effort into being filmed. So, when Nik was having doubts about filming, the most important thing I did was to sit down and listen. Was he stressed because he was afraid for the children and how it would be for them? Or was it because he was emotionally upset himself? So, just listening to him and trying to talk with him about it helped a lot. Also, if they needed some space, I gave them that space. But most of the time, it was really good. I felt me being there was good for them.
In addition to Nik and his three young children, you also filmed extensively with Ronja, Maria’s teenage daughter from a previous relationship. In the doc, it is clear that she is heartbreakingly alone in her grief. What was that like to film?
Filming with Ronja was really different from the other three children because they were really living in the present time and were going in and out (grief). They could be like, “I really miss Mommy and the smell of Mommy’s hair,” and then they could turn around and be like, “What are we going to have for dinner, Daddy?” So, I would just try to film them in those moments without starting a conversation. I just needed to be there. But with Ronja, she was struggling. The loss of her mother and her grief came stronger later. She wouldn’t even let me film her outside of her house because she was afraid that people would ask about her mother. She didn’t have many people around, so I felt my presence for her was good. I don’t think I could film her if I felt otherwise.
How is she doing now?
What’s been so amazing with Ronja is that she is now traveling around the world with the film. She goes on stage and talks about how it was to lose her mother in front of hundreds of people with such dignity and power. It has been amazing to see. So, I feel that filming was a healing process for her.
How do you think Maria would react to the film and all of the changes her family has gone through?
I met Maria’s friends from film school at CPH:DOX, and they said her biggest dream when she went to film school was to have a film at Sundance. So, I think she would love all of this. And Ronja told me that she knows (Maria) loves the film.
“A New Kind of Wilderness” is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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