A beautiful film of an off-grid family shattered by bereavement. When photographer Maria Vatne died in 2019, her family had to come to terms with not just the loss of a parent but a whole lifestyle, including their home.

This sad and beautiful documentary from Norwegian film-maker Silje Evensmo Jacobsen tells a painful, complicated story. It’s a story that the director appeared to have chanced upon through following the blog of the brilliant photographer, Maria Vatne, who recorded her idyllic wilderness existence living on a farm in Norway with her British husband Nik Payne and their three home schooled children Ulv, Falk and Freja, and an elder daughter Ronja, from Maria’s previous partner. 

Throughout the film the children bring spontaneous joy, humour and lively play into the story. They joke about each other and their Dad and to his dismay are thrilled by a game on the school iPad they introduce into their device free home.     

The film, with heartfelt sweetness, finally shows the children starting to grow up and move on, while for Nik it is not so easy. And then, over the closing credits, the director springs what is effectively a brilliant, subtle, extra-textual coup de cinema; she directs the audience to Maria’s website, perhaps in the knowledge that they might well read Maria’s blogpost from June 2016, called The Letting Go, which will send you back to watch the film all over again. A deeply humane and emotionally literate piece of work.