I had the pleasure of speaking with filmmaker Bart Schrijver and actors Bart Harder and Carles Pulido about their beautiful new film, The North.
With breathtaking cinematography set against the Scottish Highlands, The North follows two former best friends, Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carles Pulido), who reunite to hike 330 miles together after not seeing one another for 10 years. Hoping to reconnect, they find their conversations interrupted, their frustrations hard to describe, and the intimacy they once shared more challenging to recover than they thought.
Harder and Pulido first met through the project, and the warmth between them was apparent even over Zoom. “We immediately became friends… in real life,” Pulido said. Harder agreed: “The friendship thing was kind of natural.”
As the relationship between their characters became more strained, however, Pulido began intentionally distancing himself from Harder during filming, sometimes walking alone for hours. During our interview, it occurred to him that he had never actually asked Harder what that was like for him, so he asked him right then. Harder explained that because they had developed “such a beautiful start, and a real friendship,” he understood when Pulido needed space. “It was totally fine,” he laughed. It was one of the sweetest moments of the interview, demonstrating that their bond had become secure enough to withstand the space the filming process required without experiencing it as a threat to their actual friendship.
Schrijver explained that the idea for the film came from his own experience hiking in New Zealand with a friend. They spent months together, even sharing a tent. Years later, skimming through his travel diary, he noticed that although they were physically together the whole time, they weren’t always emotionally connected.
As a psychotherapist who works with many men navigating relationships, identity, and intimacy, I was drawn to the film’s honest portrayal of male friendship. We are having more and more conversations about male loneliness, often accompanied by the suggestion that men just need to talk more about their feelings. However, these discussions are incomplete without looking at how men experience closeness, or why being emotionally vulnerable with another man can feel threatening.
Throughout my clinical career, I have witnessed how people approach friendship differently. While women frequently describe meeting specifically “to talk,” men often connect through shared activities, side by side. They play sports, go hiking, watch games, or grab a drink.
“I think it has to do with how men treat vulnerability,” Pulido said. He described how men may feel the need to protect themselves from a world that can feel hostile and rejecting of open displays of emotion.
“I guess men learn, the hard way or not, to create a shield around us,” Pulido reflected.
When two people sit across from each other with the explicit expectation of emotional disclosure, the intensity of being observed can heighten self-consciousness. In side-by-side connection, eye contact becomes optional, silence feels less conspicuous, and conversation can unfold without pressure.
“No one, at least in my experience, no one… showed me how, or taught me how to bring my guard down,” Pulido said.
He explained that among male friends it can feel more comfortable to invite someone to do an activity together. “But unconsciously, we are… meeting to talk.”
Harder described hiking with his own group of male friends, who make an effort to check in, with most conversations evolving naturally as they walk side by side.
“At a certain point you walk with this guy and say, ‘Hey, how are you really doing?’”
Vulnerability as a Threat to Masculinity
Men may be encouraged to be emotionally available while simultaneously receiving the message that vulnerability makes them weak.
I've encountered male survivors who feel ashamed of having experienced trauma because they believe they should have fought back. Others fear that expressing sadness, rejection, or emotional dependency will make them appear less masculine. Some have described being mocked by male friends for admitting heartbreak or disclosing an assault, reinforcing the very silence that keeps them isolated.
“I think the misunderstanding sometimes is that men don't have those emotions or have less,” Schrijver said.
“There's a lot of anger, because that's an emotion that men are allowed to have,” Schrijver said.
When Old Friendships Change
For Schrijver, part of making The North involved accepting that some friendships cannot return to what they once were. Careers develop, romantic relationships deepen, families begin, and priorities change. Differences that mattered little in youth can become more consequential with age.
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Chris has followed a relatively conventional path, with a demanding career, a romantic relationship, and responsibilities that repeatedly intrude on the trip. Lluis, meanwhile, is questioning his direction and searching for fulfillment. Schrijver described the men as experiencing different economic and social realities while having remarkably similar internal struggles. Both are trapped, in different ways, by expectations they have imposed upon themselves.
“Even though you haven't seen or talked to each other for that long, you still call each other best friend,” Schrijver said. “The moment that you're OK with things not being the way they used to be, then there's new space for the relationship to evolve into something else.”
Harder reflected on how painful it can be to recognize that a friendship has changed, since, unlike romantic relationships, friendships rarely come with formal endings.
In therapy, I often see people struggling to reconcile who someone used to be with who they have become. We expect old friends to understand us and show up for us, and we can feel betrayed when they no longer do. Reconnecting can require relinquishing the friendship we remember and becoming curious about each other again. In The North, Chris and Lluis are learning whether they can make room for the people they have become.
Vulnerability Is More Than Talking About Feelings
Schrijver deliberately allows moments of silence to linger rather than rescuing the audience from the discomfort. Pulido described the silence as giving the audience “the time to enter the experience themselves.”
Vulnerability requires courage from the person sharing and receptivity from the person listening. Being emotionally vulnerable means allowing ourselves to be witnessed in our suffering, while both people tolerate the discomfort without rushing to fix it.
Schrijver also described how restricting our emotional range can leave life feeling flat. “If you never cry, then you take out a bit of the low part, then you also take a bit out of the top part.”
One of the film’s most moving scenes captures a breakthrough between the two friends and the reality that true intimacy does not depend on how eloquently someone can describe their internal experience. In fact, often the very opposite is true. I won't spoil it, because you should see it for yourself, but it involves two friends struggling to find their way back toward each other.
I highly recommend seeing The North, this visually magnificent, emotionally raw, extraordinary movie, in theaters. Perhaps afterward, invite a friend for a walk. You never know where the conversation could take you.