Maria Vatne and Nik Payne had made a decision to raise their four children, including one Vatne had from a previous partnership, outside the realm of traditional society, resettling in her native Norway where the family would eat what they produced on a farm and Vatne, a celebrated photographer, could supplement their income with her pictures. Documenting her life off the grid on her blog, Wild and Free, she pulled in an audience from around the world, including the filmmaker Silje Evensmo Jacobsen, who had become enchanted like so many others with how Vatne and Payne had managed such an idyllic existence in nature.
In “A New Kind of Wilderness,” Jacobsen ends up telling a very different kind of story than the one she could’ve expected when Vatne was diagnosed with cancer and passed away shortly after the two made plans for a documentary. However, with the limited amount of interviews that the director was able to conduct with Vatne and her voluminous archive of pictures, she comes alive as much as she remains in the minds of her family, which struggles to find the strength to carry on without her and graciously allow for Jacobsen to stick around to watch as they work through their grief and adjust to a new normal. Beyond the unexpected bursts of heartache that sneak up on Nik and his children with Maria — Freja and her two younger brothers Falk and Ulv — the newly single father has to keep a roof over their head when Vatne had been the primary breadwinner while he cared for the kids, putting in jeopardy their shared desire to homeschool them when he can’t watch them if he’s looking for work, and Maria’s daughter Ronjo becomes estranged from the family, returning to live with her father when the emotional fallout from staying in her mother’s home becomes too much.
While the film is bound to wring a few tears, Jacobsen honors Vatne’s memory by not only keeping her spirit intact, but suggests that to everything there’s a balance and in charting the aftermath of her death, the family learns to lean on each other and become self-sustaining in ways that their matriarch surely hoped for but could never have predicted. Filmed with remarkable sensitivity, “A New Kind of Wilderness” extends its grace to the passage of time where wounds can start to be healed and on the eve of the film’s premiere at Sundance, Jacobsen spoke about taking the longview when it came to telling the story of the Payne family, the ongoing influence of Vatne and marrying her perspective to what the director saw unfold after her passing.
How did this all come about for you?
I discovered Maria’s blog ten years ago and was just inspired by her stories of deciding to reinvent your life, jumping off the path and being self-sufficient [with] homeschooling and everything. The photos she had were breathtaking, and I wanted to make a series of their journey. For six or seven years, I was just messaging her, we have to make something, but we didn’t do anything more than filming for one day in 2014. And then when she died, I was filled with grief. I didn’t know her that well, but I just knew that I needed to make something, so I called Nik and said, “Okay, let’s do something, but it will be it will be a bit different story.” And I decided to start to film them after her passing, and it was still a film about making a conscious choice [to] live off the grid,” but it’s also a film about changes leading to adapt to modern society and the mourning process, getting through grief. So it was a bit more complex film than it was in the beginning.
You still have Maria introduce the film and her words and pictures shape it quite meaningfully. From what you had of her, did you have your foundation?
Yeah, she was always the backbone of the film and initially, there was a lot more actually. But when I started filming, I just discovered the process they were in and there’s Nik, who is trying to deal with everything that’s happening, being a single parent and trying to keep up the [farm], and [Ronja and Freja] the two girls finding back to each other. These stories were so important to film in the moment and then I decided to use the stories from her that could relate to what was happening in present time.
Was Ronja always a part of this when she was living separate from the family?
Yeah, she was definitely a part of this from the beginning. It was hard to see how to get her story in. People who were involved in the film said, “She just needs to be in the film,” and it happens to family when we’ll lose one person, then [others] have to move and being the stepdaughter, and she was also 14 when she lost her mother, she had a really important story, but it was also a different story [from the central one]. She also had been a part of the Wild and Free commitment for Maria and now she was having this modern life in the city, yearning for her siblings. The more I got to know [all of] them, the more I realized that how she longed for her siblings, and I also saw Freya also longing for the women in her family, the mother and her sister. And I just knew that Ronja really wanted to connect with them, but nobody helped her and it was difficult for her to do it by herself. So it was a puzzle to make all the ends meet, but I knew that the sister story was always there and it was delicate how to [bring] it into the story.
When this family does live off the grid, not owning a television, and going through the grief they are, is it tough to bring a camera into that?
Because they met me before and they knew that Maria wanted me to make a film, that made a pretty good starting point because they trusted me, and for Nik, this was a really hard time in his life and sometimes maybe he was regretting it a bit, but then we had good talks about what was difficult and I laid off a bit and came back. I just needed to be delicate in the way I was working, not pushing too much.
When Maria was a photographer, did her photos enter your thinking in how to convey this story visually?
Of course, but Maria was a much better photographer than I am. And I [photographed] a lot 10 years ago, but not much recently. Initially, my idea was that I wouldn’t try to compete with her photos. I was planning more on having this contrast with their life and their photos. But when you come there [to their farm], when it was good weather and the children are being out in the world, it’s difficult not to get good shooting material, so I would just be there present when it’s happening and if it was nice weather, [I’d say] “let’s film the nice weather,” but it was important for me that this film should look good as well because I wanted to respect her in the way she presented her work.
There’s several priceless reaction shots in the film, particularly of Ulv as he’s watching his father lay a bull to rest. When it may just be you out there, was it difficult to cover a scene with all those kids running around the farm or out in the wild?
Yeah, my favorite shots were actually or Ulv, or Wolfie, like the father called him, and I had so many of these scenes of him going fishing, [where he’d] make the hole in the ice, taking out a fish, killing the fish, and going home and just putting it in the pan, making it good with the butter and he’s five years old! I was like, “Oh, this is a great scene. I love it. But I needed to take a lot of those scenes out because I needed to connect the scenes with the story or else it would be a two-and-a-half hour long film. I kept the bull scene because I needed to have a couple of those scenes to show how how they lived.
What was it like actually connecting what you shot to what Maria left you?
In the editing room, I took away all the photos and stories that didn’t connect with what I had filmed, but for example when Nik takes Wolfie to school for the first time, and not just Wolfie, but all of the children, [you had to] understand why that was hard for him. It’s not that he hates school, but it was just his life project with Maria, so when I chose this [scene to include], [I drew on] her talk about institutions and why they keep their children homeschooling. They wanted to have the children close and to be wild and free. And now he’s not betraying Maria [as he suggests he’s feeling in the film], but still, he’s [moving away from] the life project and that was hard for him, so to connect with what happened in the present, I needed to have her photos and stories to be relevant.
It came out beautifully, and when you’ve been carrying this with you for a bit, what’s it like getting this ready to get out into the world?
It’s amazing. I was saying, “We need to share it, we need to” [for so long] and I’m so happy that people were just, “Okay, just wait for Sundance. Let’s just keep it.” And to bring the family — the whole family will go to Sundance and to sit there with them and watch the film and be there with the audience and the family, it will be amazing. They’ve seen it a couple of times, so they’re prepared. But I’m really looking forward to it. I don’t know if I really understand it yet when it’s going to happen.
“A New Kind of Wilderness” will screen at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19th at 3:15 pm at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, January 20th at 2 pm at Redstone Cinemas at Park City, January 21st at 11 am at the Broadway Centre Cinemas 6, January 25th at 10:30 am at Holiday Village Cinemas in Park City, January 26th at 2 pm at Redstone Cinemas 1 in Park City. It will also be available to stream from January 25th through 28th.
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