Smoke Sauna Sisterhood: Women cleanse their bodies and souls in incredible documentary
Fire, water, steam and smoke come together in the searing documentary debut of Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints, who allows the audience to bear witness to a selection of raw anecdotes that make up the feminine experience.
In Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, you are invited into a sauna in rural Estonia where a group of women discuss childhood, abortions, sexuality, spousal abuse, sexual violence and cancer.
The wood-fired smoke sauna tradition of the Vana-Võromaa in Southeast Estonia is part of the UNESCO List of The Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The ritual is a way of life to the men, women and children of the region, connecting family and friends to cleanse body and soul inside a place of peace and contemplation.
But Smoke Sauna is an exclusively female experience, no man is even glimpsed. The film begins with chanting and a breastfeeding baby, and the dedication at the end from Hints simply reads “To All My Sisters”.
The women bare their souls and their skins, though few show their faces.
Instead we’re asked to examine the texture of their bodies, captured like oil paintings, as they laugh and cry and console one another, some gentle prying enough to encourage the women to tell their own truths which are horrifying and profoundly moving.
Hints said: “The smoke sauna is a place where women used to give birth, wash the dead and heal.
“My Võro granny, who was like a mother to me, passed on the heritage, chants and knowledge and also the transforming power of smoke sauna culture.
“Since childhood I knew that on this Earth there is a place where all our emotions and experiences can be shared without judgement or shame. In the protective darkness of the smoke sauna everything can come out. No experience is too harsh or too embarrassing, every voice has the right to express themselves.”
Smoke Sauna was the first documentary by an Estonian director to compete, and win, at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and is Estonia’s official entry into the Best International Feature Film category at the 2024 Oscars.
Despite a rudimentary concept, Hints shows off some tactile filmmaking.
Not only is the dark and and sweaty atmosphere of the sauna itself incredibly captured, Hints allows the audience outside in brief interludes to come up for air and to contemplate both themselves and the movie.
It is remarkable that Hints’ documentary is not more horrifying, given the subject matter. Instead there is a bittersweet balance to all of it, all these women are in it together, even if their own stories are not connected.
One woman, who shields her face with her arm as she recounts her rape and a sexual assault asks at the end: “I want to protect my daughter from all of this, but how can I?”
A cynic might argue that Smoke Sauna should include a trigger warning for, well, everything.
But it is important for all, men in particular, to not avert their eyes from what the reality of womanhood is.
This 90-minute documentary might be focused on a particular region of Estonia, but the stories are, sadly, universal.
In a sauna and a cinema, no one can see your tears.
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is out in select cinemas from October 13. It is rated 15.
