Folktales review – taking on tyranny of social media as teens learn to live like hunter-gatherers

In this documentary, high schoolers camp out in subzero temperatures, making their own fires and driving sledges in the wild The Pasvik Folk high school in remote northern Norway teaches teenagers to grow as young adults and escape the pressures of toxic social media by challenging them to get back in touch with their “stone age brain” and live like hunter-gatherers in the snowy wild. This is the subject of a documentary from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. Over winter months of almost continuous darkness, the teens cleanse themselves with tasks such as camping out in subzero weather, making their own fires and driving sledges with huskies. Prior to all this of course is presumably a solemn promise to do without their phones, tablets and laptops, although there are no scenes of the kids actually having to surrender these gadgets (this isn’t rehab, after all). They have to swim in icy water; and they make it look like fun. What doesn’t look like fun is the camping out and there is one t...

Last Swim review – a London school leaver’s complicated A-level results day

Deba Hakmat is impressively subtle as a British-Iranian teen whose celebrations come unstuck

Sasha Nathwani is a UK-based director of award-winning short films, of Iranian and Indian heritage, stepping up here to his feature debut. It opens the Generation strandin Berlin and is a sweet-natured, heartfelt and earnestly acted film; a little precious maybe, but saved from emo-sentimentalism by irreverent humour and a wittily self-aware final image of his leading actor’s face.

Last Swim is the story of Ziba, played by Deba Hakmat, an Iranian-British teen who has just stormed her A-levels and landed a place at University College London to read astrophysics; this is despite a certain attitude on the part of her interviewer who shows, if not microaggression, then microcondescension, pointedly asking if any other members of Ziba’s family ever studied this subject. Ziba has got intricately detailed plans for her and her 6th form mates to celebrate on results day; these are Tara (Lydia Fleming), Shea (Solly McLeod) and Merf (Jay Lycurgo).

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