Video: Vargsamtal/Nowness

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Would you choose to live wild and free as a wolf, or have a job with benefits, like a sled dog?

Swedish-born Sven Engholm owns and operates a dogsledding tour company in the extreme north of Norway, far above the Arctic Circle. In Vargsamtal, this prizewinning elite dogsledder tells the Swedish filmmaker Axel Byrfors how he took a group of stray dogs along with his dogsled team on an expedition to Kamchatka. With a spare, poetic style of storytelling, Engholm imagines that the howls exchanged between the harnessed dogs and the wild wolves nearby are a conversation about who has the better life. Set to striking images of the Finnmark Plateau, this evocative bit of musing pits the merits of a secure, purpose-driven existence against a life of boundless freedom.