Director: Anna Hints
In southern Estonia, the smoke sauna or savusauna is a sanctuary where women can gather in the wilds of the country to cleanse and unburden. These rustic huts have no chimneys, and so the smoke from the sauna fires is trapped inside until ventilated when the peak temperature is met. It is as if the building breathes along with the inhabitants. Inhaling, holding and then letting out with commensurate catharsis. Sat within, away from the world, its judgments and stressors, a safe space is nurtured for intimate confessionals. It’s not just bodies being detoxed in these dark and heady spaces.
Anna Hints’ documentary sees a small number of middle aged women sharing their innermost in just such a locale. It’s bitter cold outside the hut. We see the women nipping out hastily for calls of nature in the woods, or taking brave dips into an ice hole. But these are intermissions from the hothouse sauna scenes where their voices and histories hold court.
Hints adds no narration and the barest amount of context, immersing us with her group; a privileged interloper. Some of those present favour anonymity, a couple don’t. Acknowledging this means Hints’ coverage gets creative and jigsawlike. Faces obscured in darkness. Bodies resting at shadowy angles. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is a feast of textures and curves and close-quarter disembodiment. In combination it registers as a micro celebration of natural beauty removed from consumer stereotypes. These are real women and their physical bearing is often intrinsic to the stories they share.
In combination these stories reveal how much of an escape the sauna is, with a conspicuous through-line that it has become an oasis from the patriarchal strictures of the world at home. Early conversations find the women weary of the shame they’ve been made to feel all their lives from societal expectations and conventional notions of beauty. Later, as individuals are moved to share lengthier personal traumas, a litany of brutal deeds committed by men are shared, and one is reminded grimly of statistics about the grotesque prevalence of sexual assaults and domestic violence. Broadly, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood catalogues how these women unburden and (one hopes) continue the process of healing themselves through their communion in a place that appears more sacred and necessary with every passing minute.
It’s not all horror stories, either. Camaraderie is palpable, and an aside about dick-pics has the group cackling, guard down. Still, its a relatively brief oasis of mirth in an otherwise sorrowful set of tales; all bodily tales connected deeply to womanhood and indoctrinated shame.
Hints dials up the ASMR joys of the sauna itself. The hissing of the coals, the spatter of water, the creak of wood. At its most patient or reflective, the film briefly strives for the same auras of harmony located in the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, or the documentaries of Werner Herzog. But such moments are usually short-lived intervals. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is more engaged in these voices and using them as a microcosm of broader societal ills. This is a feminist outcry that starts hushed and tentative, but swells to something ancient, tribal and – yes – cathartic.
The Lost Highway Hotel 