In 2014, film director Silje Evensmo Jacobsen was fascinated by a Norwegian photographer’s blog. Blogger Maria Vatnet visually captures how she and her British husband Nick Payne are raising and homeschooling their four bilingual children unattended on their Scandinavian farm. .
“I admired her because her family represents the lifestyle and mindset that inspired me,” says Jacobsen. “[Their life]wasn’t easy. It involved hard work and a lot of fighting, but it was a fulfilling life and a rush of freedom.”
Initially, the director wanted to make a Norwegian television documentary series about Vatnet and her husband’s unconventional lifestyle, but that never happened. The project was then put on hold for several years. Then, in 2019, Jacobsen discovered Vatnet had been diagnosed with cervical cancer and could die within a year. Despite Vatone’s death, Jacobson says he “felt an urgency” to visually capture Maria’s world. “For me, the best way to do that is to tell her story, and in a deeper dimension, through her family, her children and their way of life, so that the spirit of Mary continues to live on after such a great loss. The idea was to show how she coped with it through her photos and stories.
The result of Jacobsen’s earnest desire is the visually beautiful and emotionally eventful 84-minute documentary A New Kind of Wilderness, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Winner of the Sundance World Documentary Awards Jury Award, the film is a tender look at a family evolving through grief and shifting ideals.
Variety spoke with Jacobson before the documentary’s New York premiere Friday at DCTV Fire Station.
This document has many, many layers. It’s about this unique, idyllic life that Nick is trying to maintain after the death of his wife, but it’s also about universal themes like grief, parenting, blended families, loneliness, etc. Listen, was it your intention to touch on all these topics?
Jacobsen: Yes, because it was a movie about humanism. It’s a movie about human relationships and family relationships, so yeah, I think I knew that. But for me, it was also a unique process that my family had gone through. All changes. It was also about raising children, being a parent, making decisions for your children, and not always knowing what’s right. So when I started the movie, I watched all the layers and I didn’t know what was going to happen. I just had this idea and wanted Maria’s photos and story to be a part of it.
It seamlessly interweaves Maria’s video blog with the present. I think Maria has created a lot of videos. Did that make editing difficult?
There were many versions that featured more of Maria, but my editor and I realized that if we were going to feature her, it needed to reflect her current life. Therefore, her voice from the past needed to reflect what we see in the present. That’s our creed, or our Bible, and we stuck to it when we edited it. Removed many nice locations that Maria could enter. I only wanted what I needed as part of the story.
“A New Kind of Wilderness” Courtesy of A5 Film You began filming Nick Payne and his children shortly after Maria died, and continued filming with the family for the next three years. How did you gain their trust, especially in the early days of filming when Nick and his children were in deep grief?
It was difficult. It’s hard to be photographed, and it’s hard to be photographed for long periods of time, especially when it’s something so personal. In the early days, when we were photographing families, they were like, “We don’t know about this.” I would be really stressed out if they wanted to continue filming (I wasn’t sure). But after a while (I realized) they were also putting a lot of effort into being photographed. So when Nick had questions about filming, the most important thing I did was sit down and listen. Was he stressed out because he was worried about his children and what it would mean for them? Or was it because he himself was mentally disturbed? So just listening to him and talking about it helped me a lot. Also, if they needed space, I gave them that space. But mostly it was really good. I felt it was good for them that I was there.
In addition to Nick and his three young children, you also photographed extensively with Maria’s teenage daughter, Ronja, from a previous relationship. The documents make it clear that she is heartbreakingly alone in her grief. What was it like filming?
Shooting with Ronya was really different from shooting with my other three children. This is because they were really living in the current era and were coming and going (sad). You might think, “I really miss mom and the smell of mommy’s hair,” but you might turn around and say, “Daddy, what should we have for dinner?” So I tried to just capture the moment without starting a conversation. I just needed to be there. But in Ronya’s case, she was struggling. She lost her mother, and her grief became even stronger later on. She wouldn’t even let people photograph her outside the house for fear of people asking about her mother. There weren’t many people around her, so I felt that my presence was good for her. If I felt otherwise, I don’t think I could photograph her.
what is she doing now?
The great thing about Ronya is that she’s now traveling all over the world with this film. She took the stage and spoke with dignity and strength in front of hundreds of people about what it was like to lose her mother. It was amazing. So I think filming was a healing process for her.
How do you think Maria will react to this movie and all the changes her family has gone through?
I met some of Maria’s friends from film school at CPH:DOX and they told me that her biggest dream while attending film school was to have a film screened at Sundance. So I think she will like all of this. And Ronya said she knows that (Maria) loves that movie.
“A New Kind of Wilderness” is currently seeking distribution in the United States.
