The smoke sauna occupies a special, even sacred, place in the daily lives of Estonians, as a refuge that can not only warm one’s bones in the northern European cold, but thaw the emotional reserve and quiet stoicism so ingrained in the national character. In her debut feature documentary Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, screening in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance, director Anna Hints grants us intimate access into a steamy, wood-panelled hut with a group of women who unburden their souls while cleansing their bodies, sharing deeply personal experiences with one another in conversation. Inevitable comparisons will be made with Steam of Life, the documentary by Joonas Berghall and Mika Hotakainen from neighbouring Finland that in 2010 was a breakout success and similarly portrayed the sauna as a rare occasion for deep sharing among friends. But while that film was a portrait of masculinity, Hints shows how the sauna has functioned as a healing space for women to reclaim a sense of bodily autonomy in a brutally patriarchal world.
The film has a visual lustre, its snowy woodland shots the stuff of wintry touristic dreamland, while the cabin inside is like a chiaroscuro painting of shadows and golden light. Immersion in the experience is visceral, and we can almost feel the heat on our faces as we hear the water hit the hot rocks. Smoke sauna from southern Estonia is on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list, and Hints, who hails from the region and has a background in folk music experimentation, is able to present the custom and its pagan roots with a respectful insider’s sensitivity that takes us deeper than mere human interest or exoticisation. Sauna chants are woven throughout, setting the atmosphere of ritualistic communion. The film should enjoy wide festival play, its ethnographic layers offering a unique window onto lesser-known heritage (in addition to bathing, the sauna is a place for the smoking of meat, and occasionally childbirth), while its emotionally charged, confessional stories of female experience strike a strong chord of universal relatability.
Body image, and the sense of shame that defined the early years of a woman not considered beautiful by conventional standards, is a topic that comes up as the group, relaxed by the heat, settles into chatting. Naked female forms are very much in the frame, in close-ups that do not seek to objectify but rather affirm the corporeal presence of the bodies as they are, in diverse shapes. As the women scrub each other’s backs, wash their hair, beat their shoulders with leaves to stimulate circulation and run out for a freezing ice-hole dip, feeling and really inhabiting one’s own skin is conveyed as important, as opposed to being scrutinised and evaluated. Their discussion ranges across numerous topics related to gender, sexuality, bodies and relationships: the phenomenon of dick pics on Tinder, the shock of a breast cancer diagnosis, coming out to parents as a lesbian, stigmas around not marrying and divorce, abortions and stillbirth, domestic violence as experienced across generations, first experiences of menstruation (dubbed “the illness” in former decades), death and rape.
The stories build and layer, as the women cathartically “sweat out all this pain and fear.” A significant vision emerges of women in Estonia over the last few generations, of how their identities have been forged and their bonds consolidated, as Soviet oppression and the subsequent rocky transition to independence left a legacy of trauma within Estonian society that was at times channeled into aggression. The stories told are not geared to be uplifting — an extended account of a sexual assault is particularly grim — but they tap a raw honesty that grounds the film and cuts through the glossier aspects of its packaging with an appealing no-nonsense Estonian frankness. One of the women expresses worry over how she can protect her daughter from the kind of things they have been through. It may still be a man’s world, but in the smoke sauna, Hints suggests, women are truly seen and heard, and can regroup their inner resources.
Director and writer: Anna Hints
Editing: Hendrik Mägar, Tushar Prakash, Martin Männik, Qutaiba Barhamji, Anna Hints
Cinematography: Ants Tammik
Producer: Marianne Ostrat
Production Design: Tomas Berka
Music: Edvard Egilsson
Sound: Huldar Freyr Arnarson
Production companies: Alexandra Film (Estonia), Kepler22 Productions (France), Ursus Parvus (Iceland)
Sales: Autlook Filmsales
Venue: Sundance
In Estonian
89 minutes
