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The Payne family lives on a small, remote farm in a Norwegian forest. Parents Maria and Nik, along with their four children, embrace self-sufficiency and home-schooling, and strive to live in total harmony with nature. To make ends meet, Maria occasionally works as a photographer, capturing her family and surroundings in photos and stories shared on her blog, “Wild + Free.” But their world turns upside down when tragedy strikes, and Maria suddenly passes away. Nik must sell the farm, give up his independent lifestyle and reluctantly return to civilization in order to raise his children. “But Mom will come with us,” the kids assure him, and Maria’s photos and stories, present throughout the film, maintain her memory as a constant presence and narrator. A New Kind of Wilderness is a universal story about life choices and responsibilities, a blueprint for living and loving, and a touching message about climate crisis and sustainability through the loss of a mother and Mother Nature.
In Norwegian and English with English subtitles.
Content advisory: themes of death. May be too mature for young audiences.