Folktales with Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady and Ondi Timoner (Ep. 555)

The Director’s Cut - A DGA Podcast

Directors Guild of America

Tv & Film

4.6 • 806 Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady discusses their new film, Folktales, with fellow Director Ondi Timoner in a Q&A at the DGA theater in Los Angeles. In the conversation, they discuss the logistics of filming in the unpredictable daylight and wilderness of Norway, creating scenes by finding inspiration in the nature around them, and forging trust as well as capturing formative moments with their teen subjects. Screened as part of the DGA’s Documentary Series, the film follows a class of teenagers who take a gap year to learn wilderness survival and dog sledding in the frozen Norwegian landscape. Guided by their teachers and a pack of Alaskan huskies, they discover their own potential and develop deep relationships with the land, animals and humans around them. See photos and a summary of this event below: https://www.dga.org/events/2025/september2025/docseries_folktales-073125

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rachel and I, we've made a lot of films about this age group and a little bit younger, but we hadn't done it in a while. This is our Gen Z situation, and they're used to controlling their own image, and they invented the selfie, and we come along and we're like, no, no, we're going to do it, and you're going to let us do it, and we're going to... We were shocked. Yeah. This was a, this was a tough, they were a tough group. There's a tough crowd.
0:01.0	Yeah.
0:01.1	And they didn't want to be fair. do it and we're going to... We were shocked. Yeah. This was a tough, they were a tough group.
0:22.9	There was a tough crowd.
0:23.9	And they didn't want to be famous
0:25.2	or they didn't want to be influences.
0:26.8	These are like quiet Northern European kids.
0:29.0	We had like literally nothing to offer them
0:30.7	except like, you want to tell your story?
0:33.6	You want to tell your story?
0:51.9	Yeah. story. Hello, and welcome back to the Director's Cut, brought to you by the Directors Guild of America.
0:57.7	In this episode, young adults in Norway find connection to nature, and directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's documentary, folk tales.
1:07.3	Screened as part of the DGA's documentary series, the film follows a class of teenagers
1:12.1	who take a gap year to learn wilderness survival and dog sledding in the frozen Norwegian
1:16.7	landscape. Guided by their teachers and a pack of Alaskan Huskies, they discover their
1:22.1	own potential and develop deep relationships with the land, animals, and humans around them.
1:33.3	In addition to folktales, Ewing and Grady's other directorial credits include the documentary features, The Boys of Baraka, Jesus Camp, and Norman Lear,
1:38.7	Just Another Version of You, and episodes of the television documentary series, POV, True Life, and American Masters.
1:49.1	Following the documentary series screening of the film
1:51.8	at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles,
1:54.2	Ewing and Grady spoke with director Andi Tamoner
1:56.5	about filming folk tales.
	...

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